


club knocked up

by hogwarts



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Baby Fic, EMOTION - carly rae jepsen (hamilton edition), M/M, everyone in this is probably gay, hamliza are bffs, waitress the musical (hamilton edition)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2018-10-26 19:42:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10793460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hogwarts/pseuds/hogwarts
Summary: Alexander Hamilton wasn't prepared for Eliza Schuyler to press a positive pregnancy test into his palm. John Laurens wasn't prepared for Hamilton and Eliza to step into his clinic. And Eliza Schuyler certainly wasn't prepared for her best friend and her OB-GYN to fall in love.





	1. knock knock (who's there?)

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to baby fic, gay hamilton edition
> 
> disclaimer: this is not a hamilton x eliza or hamilton x eliza x laurens fic even tho it looks like thats where its going in the beginning so cop out if that's what you're hoping for. if you like gay doctors and strong platonic male-female friendships then read on
> 
> this is dedicated to tehreem @pipermvlean on tumblr, ilysm sweetie have a lovely birthday

Despite the many twists and turns Alexander Hamilton has encountered during his short and occasionally unfortunate lifetime (the tragedies and misfortunes of his rather terrible childhood, for instance, or the unlikely stroke of luck which defined his adolescence, or the inevitable inconveniences faced by every twenty-seven-year-old living in New York City), nothing could have prepared him for the day Eliza Schuyler presses a positive pregnancy test into his hand.

 

He gets the call at work—well, he gets it during his lunch break, which is when he typically dashes off to the teachers’ lounge for a soggy pastrami and then dashes back to his classroom to grade whatever shitshow he’s last assigned to his students—and he gets it as a voicemail, because faculty staff are required to keep their cell phones on vibrate during school hours. Except, of course, during lunch break.

 

And today’s lunch break finds him, as routine dictates, fishing his phone out of the pocket of his coat (slung over the back of his desk chair, because some moron in some other classroom must have requested the heating dialed up a notch...or ten) and powering it on. He thumbs through the notifications which have collected on the screen in the last four hours – meager, a handful of Facebook notifications, a Duolingo reminder, a panicked alert that  _ this phone has not been backed up in 162 days _ , and – oh, a voicemail. This catches him pathetically off-guard; it’s not like Alexander doesn’t have friends, it’s just that most of them wouldn’t be caught dead making an actual phone call when the iMessage app is readily available. He calls his voicemail box, sits through the automated greeting message until the staccato of the computer-generated voice smooths into a more familiar one.

 

_ “Hey, Alex, it’s Eliza. Um, could you maybe come over to my place after school lets out? It’s...kind of urgent? Yeah, um, see you. Bye. Thanks.” _

 

So five-thirty finds him, as routine does  _ not  _ dictate, at the Schuyler’s apartment, seated on the edge of Eliza’s bathtub and slouching a little, while she leans against the sink with her arms folded across her chest, watching him stare down at the test in his hand. It’s almost funny, how unassuming it is—that skinny strip of white plastic and the two red lines which mar its surface like scars. 

 

The sad thing is that he doesn’t even get it yet, not at first, and a handful of seconds crawl by before the pieces begin to slot together in his brain. She’s pregnant—huzzah. But why would she call him in the middle of a work day, demand he come see her even though she knows he’s got work to do, stare at him with wide eyes and her lip rolling between her teeth like she does when she’s nervous? In the back of his brain he knows, of course he does, that she wouldn’t do any of that unless...

 

“Why are you telling me this?” He tears his gaze away from those lines, glances up and meets her gaze – blank, unreadable. It’s unlike her, unlike the best friend Alex can read like a book.

 

She doesn’t say anything, but the corner of her mouth twitches, and her brows knit together across her forehead like drawstrings. “Do you remember…that night,” she begins, and looks away from him, exhales. “At Burr and Theo’s engagement party a few months ago? When we...”

 

“Fucked,” Alexander supplies, at the same time that she says, “...y’know.”

 

“Right, right,” he corrects quickly. “Yeah, I remember.”

 

(It should be noted that Alexander’s usage of  _ remember _ in this context is generous. He remembers that night in bits and pieces—in the spark of carbonation on his lips, in the warm alcoholic haze clouding his brain, in snatches of colored club lights, in the taste of tequila on a tongue that wasn’t his own. And he remembers it in Eliza—in her mountains and valleys of soft skin, in cascades of dark hair, in the sharp, soul-splitting regret he felt waking up beside her. But, he thinks sharply as these thoughts spring back to mind, he really doesn’t want to go into all that again.)

 

“But,” he begins, and it comes out hoarse as his voice breaks across the syllable. “But that was almost two months ago.” 

 

“I haven’t been with anyone since you, Alex,” she says, equally as soft. “Or with anyone before you for...a long time. Not since Nino.” 

 

Her last fling, five months ago. Alex knows because he stroked her hair and and kissed her forehead and let her soak his shirt through with snot and tears after Nino ended it, boiled mugs and mugs of chai tea and walked a mile and a half to the nearest CVS for a fresh tissue box because he  _ loves _ Eliza and he would do  _ anything _ to keep her from getting hurt. He looks away, runs a hand across the tile-and-grout of the bathroom wall—same as it’s always been, palm-sized tiles in a checkerboard pattern, crisp white and baby blue, cold under his fingers. His other hand is still clenched around the pregnancy test.

 

“How long have you known?” he asks finally.

 

“A month or so.”

 

He looks up, sharply. “A  _ month _ ? Eliza, you should have  _ told _ me–”

 

“I  _ know _ ,” she snaps back, “but I didn’t actually take a test until this morning because I was  _ scared _ , all right? You’re the first one to know. I haven’t even phoned Angie yet.” A pause, thick and loaded with the tension of two lifelong friends discussing their imminent child. Then she says, “Please don’t be angry.”

 

Because he’s watching her face, Alexander sees the exact moment her lower lip starts to wobble, the exact moment her wide eyes fill and then snap shut.  _ Oh, God, Eliza,  _ he hears himself say, and he shoots to his feet, loops his arms around her waist just as she crumples forward into his chest. She’s shaking beneath his hands like she’s about to shatter, so he settles his head into the crook of her neck, circles his fingers across the small of her back. His mom used to do that, for him, when he was younger – rub the small of his back.

 

“I’m not angry,” he whispers into her shoulder. “Not at you. Never, never.”

 

“I don’t know what to do,” she mumbles, her voice thick and snotty all of a sudden, zero to sixty in an instant.  _ Neither do I,  _ he thinks, but he doesn’t say that.

 

“Are you— Do you want to keep it?” he begins instead, delicately, even though he already knows it’s a monster of a topic and he’d be better off steering clear of it until they aren’t one or both crying, but—

 

“Yes,” she says.

 

And Alexander knew that already, too, he realizes – he’s always known that she  _ adores _ kids, that she is the type of person who stops at every playground just to watch its occupants clamber across the jungle gym or swing precariously from the monkey bars, the type who strikes up conversation with every bubbly toddler she comes across. Sure, she’s got her job at the elementary school down the block, but Eliza has spent most of her years being babied by her father and her sisters – an unfortunate fate she’s wrought upon herself by being so kind, so sweet, so helpless. This is her turn, now, to take care of someone herself. Her chance. Alexander understands that.

 

He’s suddenly acutely aware of the press of her belly against his own. A  _ baby _ .

 

Eliza is inelegant when she cries, loud and wet, her forehead crumpling into a hundred tiny creases, and Alexander holds her through it, just as he always has.

 

“We’ll make it work,” he murmurs, over and over into her hair, even though he isn’t really sure he believes it yet.

* * *

The waiting room at Eliza’s gynecologist is small and cozy, a hundred-odd square feet of lemon-yellow walls and plush carpeting that Alex decides must once have been white, but has since been spoiled by the soles of too many dirty New York shoes. Eliza seems at ease as they enter, greeting the receptionist with a sunny smile and a flutter of her fingers as she checks in. She is so calm, so collected, that it borders on eerie. Alex hates it, not being able to tell from a glance what is happening inside her head; he’s used to reading her heart off her sleeve, not having to search her face for what she’s feeling.

 

It’s just shy of eleven in the morning, and the clinic is bustling with activity. They’ve managed to snag two seats in the corner of the waiting room, the plastic kind with the thin polyester cushioning. Alexander’s is pushed right up against the sunny wallpaper, but Eliza’s got another woman sitting to her right. She’s a big lady, with a cloud of ruddy, frizzy hair bouncing around her shoulders, one hand absentmindedly tracing patterns across the swelling belly under her dress. Another expecting mother, then. There aren’t any actual babies anywhere in this waiting room, Alex notices, but the echoes of infancy cling to its every nook and cranny: there’s a pregnant belly in every other seat, a stack of prenatal advice magazines on the counter, and on the walls there are glossy black-and-white shots of smooth-skinned mothers cuddling newborns to their chests. He even spots a book of crochet patterns in the hands of the woman across from him, featuring an infant in a handmade cerise bonnet on the cover. 

The woman on Eliza’s right has looked up as they approached, and one corner of her mouth rises in a crooked smile as they take their seats. "Knocked up?" she says to Eliza.

 

Eliza blinks. Her hand drifts to her own belly, unconsciously so, Alex thinks. "How did you know?"

 

The woman nods at Alexander, and he feels himself wince a little when she tosses a snide smile his way. "The fellers never show up unless there's a kid involved," she says, and huffs out a dry, mirthless laugh. 

 

"He's not my  _ feller _ ," Eliza snaps. There is something bitter about her tone, and it sends a pang of guilt rushing through Alexander's stomach, for some reason. It’s not like he’s never  _ considered _ dating Eliza – he’s a healthy young man with a healthy libido and a healthy appetite for human connection, but dating  _ Eliza _ , somehow, has never seriously been on the table. There have been two reasons for this, in the past. The first is that Alex has never been one for long-term relationships: his lengthiest clocked out at three months and twelve days, and was with a girl named Kitty in his sophomore year of college. The second is that Eliza is his  _ friend _ – his closest, certainly, probably the best he’ll ever have. He loves her as his friend, as his  _ family _ , and as smart and sweet and attractive as she is, he frankly can’t imagine loving her as anything else. 

 

A blonde nurse in pink scrubs swings around the doorway, calls “Schuyler? We’re ready for you,” and Alexander reaches over to squeeze Eliza’s fingers where they drum across her knee. She flips her hand beneath his so their palms press together, tangling his fingers with her own; her skin is a little clammy, but her grip is firm and sure, and when he looks at her she gives him a determined smile. She’s okay, he thinks. He forgets it sometimes, but she’s just as brave as he is.

* * *

 

John Laurens has been a doctor for three years now, and he has seen his fair share of unexpected people.

 

He was a nurse for the better part of his career, which means he’s dealt with patients from all across the board – patients with the flu, with food poisoning, with pinkeye, patients bearing a colorful array of STIs, patients who refuse to comply with his directions and wonder why they keep getting sick. There has been the occasional reckless motorcyclist, and not to mention the plethora of seven-year-olds who broke their arms when a fun day of tree-climbing went wrong. He’s treated rashes in every nook and cranny of the human body, popped a thousand shoulders and knees back into their sockets, and prepared and administered so many vaccines that he figures he can probably literally do it in his sleep. Once or twice, he’s had to fish an action figure out of an anus.

 

And, since graduating from nurse to gynecologist – well, he’s seen an unfathomable amount of female genitalia. He can’t deny that this part of his job weirded him out during his studies—coincidentally, he can’t say that he’s ever had an active interest in acquainting himself with the vagina—but he’s not a squirming college kid anymore; he loves his job, loves helping people, loves feeling  _ needed _ . He knows, of course, that any decent psychologist would probably tell him all that stems directly from his childhood insecurities, the ones he’s harbored since birth, the ones he’s dragged around with him like a sackful of bricks for twenty-eight years. And he loves his job because every morning, when he steps into this office, into this clinic packed chock full of people who  _ need  _ him, he gets to dump that shit at the door.

 

But then who should step across the threshold but Alexander Hamilton, wearing a threadbare coat and a hand-knit scarf and the same crooked smile that got him labeled as a troublemaker on the first day of their shared high school class and consequently reseated to the front. Alexander Hamilton, whose croaky voice crackled over the loudspeakers when he did the daily announcements every morning, who published a hundred-odd scathing articles in the school newspaper, whose impassioned campaign speeches rang out through the gym the year he ran for treasurer of the student council. John hasn’t thought about that boy since he graduated high school, but now that he sees him standing in his clinic with that scarf and that grin and one hand tucked into John’s eleven o’clock appointment’s fist, John remembers Alexander Hamilton  _ vividly _ .

 

Not, of course, that any of that matters. Hamilton is a client, and—as far as John needs be concerned—a stranger.

 

“Hello,” he says, as he’s said four times already today, “my name is John Laurens, and I transferred here from the Brooklyn clinic to fill in for Dr. Knox until, or unless, a more suitable replacement can be hired, which is to say, indefinitely. This is my second year as a full-time gynecologist, so I promise you can trust me.” He winks his scripted wink, extends his hand with the same enthusiasm that he did at seven-thirty this morning, and tries to keep that chapped-lip smile he’s slapped on his face from faltering even though he knows it shows too much of his teeth.

 

The dark-haired woman, his eleven o’clock, raises her chin, fixes him with a wide coffee-brown gaze as she fits her palm around his. “Elizabeth Schuyler,” she says. Her grip is firm, but her fingers are as thin and delicate as china. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

 

_ Schuyler _ , he thinks, and a second high-school recollection shoots through his mind as he realizes that he knows her too—she was in his second-semester visual arts course, and she’d complimented a charcoal sketch of his once, after he’d complimented hers. 

 

“Where’s Dr. Knox?” Elizabeth Schuyler— _ Eliza _ , he remembers then, never Elizabeth—says immediately. “Will she be coming back?”

 

John gives her an apologetic smile. “She retired suddenly, actually—personal reasons.” He doesn’t know. They haven’t told him shit. He brushes past the conversation topic so he will not have to admit this. “So,” he begins then, all business, all profession, “what’s the situation?”

 

The situation, they discover after Eliza pees in a cup, is that she is six weeks pregnant (“Definitely Burr’s party,” Hamilton murmurs) and fit as a fiddle. He takes her weight, her blood pressure, does the mandatory Pap smear, moves through it all like clockwork. All this takes place in the span of forty minutes, but no one in the room notices the time ticking by; Eliza and Hamilton seem to grow giddier after each test she takes, and John himself has gone on autopilot.

 

When the appointment draws to a close, Hamilton is studying him with a peculiar expression on his face, chewing on the corner of his lip, head cocked to the side and eyes narrowed like a hawk's on the hunt. "I know you from somewhere," he announces decisively, crossing his arms over his chest and fixing John with an expectant stare, like this revelation is John’s to explain.

 

John raises his eyebrows.  _ High school, _ he thinks minutely,  _ lecture hall 108 _ ,  _ AP U.S. history class, partnered with you once for that project on the role of slavery during the American Revolution, _ but he doesn't say any of that. Instead he says, "No, I don't think you do," and busies himself with checking over his clipboard, scanning Eliza's forms. He steals a glance at Hamilton, who is shrugging on his jacket, just to see if there's a reaction. There isn't, but there  _ is _ a little wrinkle that forms in the dip of his nose between his eyes when he frowns, and John notices it, for some reason. Then his gaze drifts to Eliza Schuyler, who is tugging on a beanie over her dark head, and he looks away. 

 

“Oh, hold on,” John says suddenly, but only once they’ve each got one foot out the door because of course that’s just like him. “Let me get you my card so you’ve got the new phone number.” 

 

It takes a moment of rifling through his bag before he finds the pack, and, shit—these  _ aren’t _ the new ones he had printed last week. These are the old ones his sister got him for Christmas last year, with his own personal contact info. The business pack must still be on his kitchen counter, then. Shit. Well, these will have to do—he can swap them at their next appointment.

 

Eliza’s the only one who thanks him as he hands one to each of them, and he gives her a small smile. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other in the next eight months, I expect.”

 

“Can’t wait,” she says, and there’s a dry edge to her tone. “Heard it’s a blast, being pregnant.”

 

"Yeah, well...” John can’t really think of anything to say to that. “Don't let it get you down," he says finally, then remembers the sunny prenatal slogan they’ve got at this clinic and adds feebly, "There’s joy in the journey."

 

She looks grateful, but Hamilton snorts, barks out a coarse laugh. "That’s some cheesy shit," he scoffs. "Do they pay you to say that?"

 

John's eyebrows jump into his hairline; Eliza lets out an incredulous little gasp and jams her elbow into Hamilton's ribs. John suddenly finds himself biting away a smile. He is, in fact, paid to say it, trained to toss that cheesy slogan in the face of every poor expecting mother he treats, but he has never been called out on it before today and something about Hamilton's almost oblivious bluntness makes him want to laugh. He is just as John remembers him: bright, brash, wicked smart, and lightning-quick on his feet. He has something magnetic about him, too. John can't quite pinpoint it.

 

He looks back up at Hamilton, sees him offer an arm to Eliza, hears her tinkling giggle and his joke about how chivalry isn't dead, and his heart twists a little. They look so…pristine, so  _ correct _ , like the couples that are put in ads for Viagra or printed on the front of vacation brochures, glossy and seamless and content. He really isn't sure why he notices this, or why something about it bothers him, just a tiny bit.

 

His eleven-fifty appointment appears in the doorway ten minutes later, and John makes himself forget about it.

* * *

The walk to the subway station is brisk and brief—the clinic’s only a block and a half away—and Alex and Eliza walk in silence, shoulder-to-shoulder, both their hands tucked inside their coat pockets and both their noses turned up against the frigid air. Eliza’s is rosy at the tip, as it always gets when the temperature drops below sixty; it’s late April, well into spring, but New York hasn’t quite gotten the message yet. The wind darts past them and around them and needles through Alex’s coat, racing down the street and winding around the skinny new trees they’ve planted in the sidewalks, rattling each branch and sawing at the delicate buds which adorn them like beads. The descent into the warmth of the subway station, noisome and foul as it is, is a relief.

 

“That went well,” Eliza says pleasantly once they’ve boarded their train and collapsed into their seats. “I like him. Dr. Laurens, I mean.”

 

“Mm.” Alexander draws his backpack up on his knees and rummages through the front pocket until his fingers brush across the flimsy cardboard of Laurens’ business card. He fishes it out, studies it scrupulously. “This green font is just a tiny bit horrendous, don’t you think?”

 

“Oh, stop.”

 

“Especially with the yellow background. It looks like the label on my laundry detergent.”

 

Eliza reaches over and plucks it from his grasp. “I’m putting this number in my phone. So are you.”

 

“Am I?” he murmurs, even as he slides his own phone out of his pocket and opens the contacts app. It’s always been like that, he supposes, with him and Eliza—he’d do anything she asked him, anything to make sure she’s happy. That’s what you do for the people you love, he thinks. For your family.

 

The train rattles along through the tunnels, unlit apart from the bright flashes of light from the stops they bypass (they’re going back to Eliza’s apartment for tea with her sister, who returned from London two days ago and is graciously allowing Alexander an hour of her time). He has Eliza read out the number and address off the card for him as he copies it into his phone, hits save, and checks over the finished entry.  _ elizas doctor _ , he’s put in, and after that, in parentheses,  _ john laurens _ . 

 

Interesting.

  
  
  
  



	2. take me or leave me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yearbooks; coffee and lies; you look ridiculous, alexander hamilton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when it takes u 1 (one) month to write 4000 words ....... lol relatable
> 
> chapter title from [rent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAfMZ_vWJDo)

There is, perhaps, something to be said about the fact that Alexander makes a beeline for the bottom-left shelf of his meticulously-organized bookcase when he gets home, without even hanging up his coat. It’s the shelf where he’s stowed away his collection of Books Which Hold Sentimental Value (as he’d written on the appropriate cardboard box when he moved into this apartment), or his Not-Actually-Books (as he affectionately refers to them in his head). The Not-Actually-Books consist for the most part of a collection of photo albums, which Eliza insists upon putting together for him at the end of each year; there is also a stack of old diaries, which he used to keep faithfully but has since fallen behind on; a fat notebook from a long-past time when he thought he prefered handwriting to the distinguished art of typing; and– there they are. His yearbooks, from high school.

 

(Alexander never had very much of anything when he was growing up, least of all material possessions, and even if he _had_ owned more than the clothes on his back, he was always moving around too often to keep much more than that. It had never really bothered him, not until he found himself in New York, where people had five pillows on their bed and more than a week’s worth of outfits and postcards from their families pinned to their refrigerators, and it’s perhaps from all this that springs his obsession with the simple act of _keeping_ things – of collecting even the most trivial of objects simply for the pleasure of _having_ them. It’s why he’s kept all those journals, all those darling photo albums Eliza’s made him even though he’s hardly looked at them once. It’s why he has a drawer with nothing in it except for socks with stupid patterns on them, and why his desk is littered with the snow globes Angelica brings back for him every time she goes on a business trip. It’s silly, maybe a little embarrassing, but it’s like he’s trying to compensate for everything he didn’t have when he was child, and he thinks he probably deserves at least that. But anyway. The yearbooks.)

 

The reason is John Laurens.

 

Alex still can’t shake the feeling that he _does_ know Laurens from somewhere, from something a long time ago, and the missing memory clicked into place on the train ride back to his apartment. He mulls it over as he slides a yearbook off the shelf, decides that he’s at least ninety percent certain about this as he thumbs through the pages until he finds the L section, scans the sea of overexposed student headshots for that face. And there– there he is, rounder-cheeked and longer-haired but still undeniably John Laurens, with the bright eyes and the mop of curls and the ears that stick out a fraction of an inch too far. He notes that the two-by-two photo is too small to make out the smattering of freckles across John’s skin, or the goldish-green color of his eyes. Alexander’s not sure why this thought pops into his head. He kicks it back out as suddenly as it came.

 

So he and John Laurens _do_ know each other. John’s a year older than him, then – his picture is in the senior section of Alex’s junior yearbook. Now that he’s got this information, he’s not sure what exactly to do with it. He tries and fails not to feel offended at the fact that John pretended not to know him earlier, even looked at him like he was crazy when Alex mentioned it. High school wasn’t _that_ long ago, not in the grand scheme of things, and he doesn’t want to consider the notion that John has maybe, genuinely forgotten him in the nine years since he graduated. Call him narcissistic, but he finds that hard to believe.

 

Alex looks at the photo for maybe thirty seconds longer, at the bright eyes and the mop of curls and the ears that stick out a fraction of an inch too far, and shuts the yearbook with a heavy thump.

 

* * *

 

 

Eliza is not allowed to drink coffee. She is also not allowed to change her cat’s litter, which for her is a slightly bigger issue, because she’s entrusted the task to her sister Peggy and she really isn’t sure if she trusts Peggy at all; Peggy Schuyler means well, but she’s never been particularly responsible. She loves Eliza’s cat the way she loved the plastic doll she was given when she turned five: fiercely, cooing over it for hours on end, throwing a tantrum when the pink nylon bonnet wouldn’t stay on its head, and then promptly forgetting about it within a few days.

 

But even veteran-cat owner Eliza can agree that litter-changing is not the most enjoyable facet of cat ownership, and she’s paying Peggy five dollars a pop. Besides, Eliza’s more of a tea person anyway. _She never used to be_ , Alex thinks as he watches her flick through the selection of tea bags offered at their favorite coffee spot down the block. But, then again, things change.

 

She’s quiet, even as they pick up their drinks (paper cup for him, a heavy ceramic mug for her, as always), even as they slide into seats opposite each other in their favorite booth (in the back corner, by the window), even as they sit, close enough for their knees to brush underneath the table, and at the same time avoiding one another in a desperately quiet way. Alex wants to ask her if she’s okay, but he doesn’t. There’s something heavy crowding the space between them, something which makes him feel unbalanced.

 

 _Of course it’s weird_ , he thinks to himself, and he can feel a twinge of frustration in his throat. They’re not just Alex and Eliza sitting at this table; they’re Alex and Eliza and their _baby_ , the baby she is carrying, the baby they’re going to have together. It doesn’t matter how many times Alex tells himself this. The whole baby thing– it doesn’t feel real, even a full two months in, like it’s a dream and any minute now his seven A.M alarm will shake him out of it.

 

“So, I looked up John Laurens yesterday,” he begins casually, the same way one would say “I bought a new shirt yesterday” or “I saw a funny photo yesterday and thought of you,” and while it was true that Alexander had indeed seem a funny photo yesterday, he didn't really think it was a laughing matter, and he hadn’t even considered telling Eliza about it until now.

 

“Did you,” replies Eliza, in a tone which is a spot too noncommittal for Alexander’s liking. She’s busying herself with the bowl of artificial sweeteners at the center of their table, sifting through the bright pink and yellow packets with her fingers until she draws out one which is earthy brown and has the words ALL NATURAL printed across it in an uninspiring font. She tears off one corner and dumps its contents into her mug of steaming Earl Grey, gives it a lazy stir. “Where?”

 

“That’s the funny part,” Alex says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “High school yearbook. Junior year.”

 

“That’s weird, Alexander,” she says distractedly. She’s not even looking at him – she’s looking at her lap, where she is presumably looking at her phone. Every few moments she takes a little sip of tea, her pinky finger sticking out just slightly from the rest of her hand, the way posh people drink tea in movies.

 

Eliza’s the one who taught Alex how to drink coffee. Alex had had something of a sweet tooth, back in his college days, which had led him to become something of a sugar addict, until one afternoon Eliza had caught him with a paper cup of frothy, sugary, Starbucks-trademarked goodness in his hands and nearly disowned him right then. “None of that,” she’d said scathingly, and she’d snatched the cup from his fingers and dumped it in the nearest trash can. Then she’d dragged him across town to some swanky all-natural cafe for health nuts – the kind of place which sells fat-free pastries made from spelt flour and Stevia and that sort of shit – and purchased one steaming, black-as-pitch Americano in a chipped ceramic mug. The first sip had been repulsively bitter, and Alex had choked it down with a scowl, thinking that it tasted like charred wood or old car tires or the way your stomach feels when you run into someone you do not like. But the second sip had not been so bad, and third was perhaps even good, and soon the rich, earthy flavor had settled deep in the back of his throat and was warming his body like a kettle over a flame. That was the day that Alexander had bid _adieu_ to his sugar addiction and sold his soul to coffee.

 

But things have changed, and now Eliza is the one stirring sugar into her drink and Alexander is draining his second mug of black coffee. Plus – and this, he thinks bitterly, is something of a first – she seems to be _ignoring_ him.

 

“Who are you texting?” he asks, which is the wrong question.

 

“No one,” Eliza replies immediately, which is the wrong answer, because he can _hear_ her phone buzzing with every new text that rolls in, and he can see the muscles in her forearms moving as she responds with both thumbs. Why wouldn’t she want to tell him? Eliza, Alex concludes, observing the tiny furrow between her brows as she gazes down at her screen, has a secret.

 

But that’s crazy. Eliza _sucks_ at keeping secrets. So does he, of course, which is why they don’t mind telling each other everything.

 

He’s about to open his mouth again when he hears her switch the phone off with a quiet _click_ , sees her drop it in her lap and settle her elbows on the table, both hands in view. “So, you’re still coming over on Saturday, right?” she says, and that’s the end of that.

 

Alexander doesn’t push the topic again that day. Eliza should be allowed her space and privacy – it’s not as if they’re best friends who have shared every detail of their lives with each other for the last six years, he tells himself bitterly. Besides, Dr. Laurens told them they should both work to keep her stress levels at a minimum.

 

 _Eliza’s not hiding anything from you_ , he chides himself later as he tosses his cup in the trash. _Stop being ridiculous_.

 

It’s fine. It gnaws away at him, but it’s fine.

 

* * *

 

Alexander Hamilton is not a cook.

 

He knows any given Schuyler would be quick to disagree, but he still stands by this opinion of himself. Sure, his food isn’t _totally_ disgusting, and he can whip up a decent recipe or two when the occasion presents itself, but he’s not on his way to any Michelin stars, and he sure as fuck doesn’t spend hard-earned money on cookbooks. It’s just that people like the Schuylers, who have enough dough to hire four private chefs, seem to _like_ that he makes his own food, and he likes it when people like him, he supposes.

 

(Secretly, Alex loves cooking – he loves the thin _snap_ of eggshells cracking on the rim of a bowl, loves the crisp of sea salt between his fingers, loves the frantic sizzling of oil at the bottom of a hot pan. It gives him the same feeling he gets when he reads a sentence that has all its words strung together in just the right order, like colored beads on a string. Not, of course, that he would ever dare admit this to anyone who respects him at all.)

 

It’s Saturday afternoon now, and tonight he’s got plans to cook for and dine with the Schuylers. Well – “plans” implies that he had a decision in the matter; more accurately, the eldest Schuyler sister is back in town for the week, and Eliza threatened to disown him if he didn’t come over for dinner with a steaming pot of carbonara and an arsenal of quirky anecdotes (not difficult– he works at a high school). The recipe he’s torn out of a pastel lifestyle magazine recommends a heavy-bottomed copper pan for even heating – and, Alex suspects, aesthetic purposes, which he certainly isn’t going to argue with. He has a pan like that, on the top shelf of the top ceiling cabinet of his kitchen, a place he wishes he could say was easily reachable. But Alexander, despite the heights to which he raises his chin and rock-rigid straightness of his spine, is a small man, and he cannot reach into the top cabinets of his own tiny kitchen without the two-foot boost of the plastic step stool he purchased at IKEA for that very purpose.

 

This was the position he was in when, without any warning, the heavy copper pan tumbled out of the cabinet and made contact with the fragile bones of his right foot, striking the skin with a sickening _smack_ and bouncing away to clang across the tiles of the kitchen floor. Alex’s first thought was _Fuck, I hope the pan’s not dented_ , and his second thought contained a decent percentage of the massive backlog of swear words he’s amassed in his twenty-seven years of life.

 

This is how Alexander finds himself on the floor, huddled against his refrigerator and clutching at his foot with both hands, furiously fighting back the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes as he clouds the air in his kitchen with profanity, cussing out every cuss he knows. He’s not sure he can stand. He _is_ sure that there’s not a chance he’s making that carbonara tonight. Fuck, it hurts.

 

His phone – he should call someone. Help. He should get that.

 

He drags himself across the floor, leans against the lower cabinets and manages to push up on his knees to slide his phone over the counter. Fuck, his foot hurts. He thumbs through his contacts, rings Eliza and is taken straight to voicemail – he doesn’t bother leaving a message, she never checks them – and moves on to the next Schuyler on his list, and the next. All voicemail. Jesus.

 

He combs through his mental list of people who he figures he could call. Herc – he’s at work. Laf – not even in the country.  He briefly debates calling 911, but decides he’s not _that_ much of an asshole. Ultimately he finds himself slumped against his kitchen cabinets, wallowing in self-pity and feeling hopelessly alone. God. He hates this, feeling helpless.

 

Well. There is another person he could call – one person. It’s a Sunday, so he’s probably not at work, and the business card he’d given Alex _did_ list his personal phone number, but… _It’s kind of a dick move,_ says a voice in the back of Alex’s brain. But before he can take even one second to contemplate whether he’s _truly_ that much of a dick, Alexander’s pulled up the contact on his phone and dialed the number, crossing the fingers of his free hand in his lap. _Pick up, pick up, please_. _Please, please–_

 

“Hello?” says John’s Laurens.

 

“Laurens, thank fuck, it’s Alexander Hamilton. Do you treat injured feet?”

 

The line is quiet for a moment. “Hamilton, I’m a gynecologist.”

 

“But do you treat injured feet? Potentially-broken feet. And if so, how would you feel about coming over from the clinic to my apartment to treat a potentially-broken foot?”

 

“Mr. Hamilton, this is highly improper.”

 

“Please, Laurens,” Alex says, and his voice has taken on a desperate edge. “I dropped a pan on my foot. I can’t stand. Fix me. Please.”

 

He hears Laurens heave a sigh and feels a bit guilty, but he’s too woozy with pain for the feeling to take root. “What’s your address?” he says finally, and Alex has never heard sweeter words.

 

* * *

 

It takes fifteen minutes before Laurens arrives, give or take, and the minutes tick by slow as molasses oozing out the mouth of a bottle. Alexander’s heart leaps in his throat when he finally hears the crackle of the intercom at his door. “Hamilton, it’s Laurens. You gotta buzz me in.”

 

“Shit,” Alex says to his empty kitchen. Then he takes a deep breath, grips the corner of the counter, and hauls himself up in one go.

 

Laurens grins an awkward, lopsided grin when Alex cracks open the door. _Probably because you look ridiculous_ , Alexander tells himself sourly, and he probably does, slumping against the wall and balancing tediously on one socked foot, clutching the other with a white-knuckled hand. “Afternoon,” Laurens says, and Alexander catches the trace of that southern lilt lingering around the edges of his voice. His thick mass of curls is pulled back in a bun at the nape of his neck, and he’s got a cloth bag slung over his shoulder, tie-dyed like a rainbow – a man-bag, Alex thinks, or some people might call it a purse. It would have been ridiculous on anyone else, but for some reason it look pretty okay on Laurens. “You’re real fuckin’ lucky my apartment’s three blocks away from yours.”

 

“Fuck, Laurens,” is all Alex says, and Laurens smiles again. It’s a mean-looking smile, more of a smirk, the kind of look you might give to a baby crying in a restaurant. He steps inside, eases the door shut behind him – a small mercy, so Alex won’t have to hop any farther.

 

"Okay," Laurens says, clapping his hands together, "come on, let’s check you out. Put your foot down, you look ridiculous,” and Alexander, stupid as he is, grants the request before he can really think it through. He immediately regrets it. Fire crackles in his unfortunate toe as the brunt of his weight falls to his feet, and he cusses, stumbling into John's side with the force of the pain. "Easy, easy," John murmurs, and suddenly there is a strong arm wrapped around his waist to stop him toppling.

 

"Oh, shit," Alex mumbles again, partly because his foot hurts like fuck, and partly because John's arm around his middle has caused a very peculiar feeling to settle in his belly, something he can't quite put his finger on. He huffs out loud and files that thought away for later examination.

 

"Okay, let's take a look," Laurens says once they've gotten properly situated (Alexander on the sofa, foot propped up on the coffee table, John kneeling before him and ready to inspect the damage). John begins methodically working Alex’s sock off his injured foot, and Alexander squirms, finds himself cringing at the sight of the exposed skin. He hates his feet, has hated them for as long as he can remember. They're bony, and knobby, the skin a shade paler than the rest of him, with a smattering of dark hair across the tops of his toes. There’s veins, too, thick ones that rope across the bones just under the skin. Thank fuck the fat mole on his left foot stays hidden by a sock. And oh, God, the socks, too, are highly humiliating: They’re the cheap fleecy kind they sell at Rite-Aid, made from that material which is soft until you wash it and then becomes horrible and scruffy afterwards, and this particular pair is a dirty mustard color embellished with thin fire engine-red stripes like Alexander’s some kind of wannabe Ronald McDonald. He’s embarrassed, and he doesn’t even know why, because it’s not like he’s ever _cared_ what John Laurens thinks of him. Cursed socks.

 

“Well, you aren’t bleeding, so that’s a start,” Laurens says as the sock comes off. He’s squinting at Alexander’s foot, and Alex feels a little spark of admiration in his gut as he watches John examine him. It’s clinical, practiced, like Laurens has done this a hundred times. He probably has. “Can you wiggle it for me?”

 

He can. “Good, so at least it’s not broken. Probably just a moderate midfoot sprain. You’ll want some ice for the swelling, where’s your freezer?”

 

Ice. Alex should have thought of that.

 

Five minutes later, there is a plastic sack of frozen peas draped across Alexander’s foot, which Laurens has bandaged with a roll of gauze he apparently always carries around in his rainbow purse. The gauze is now back inside the bag, and the bag is back around Laurens’ shoulder, and Laurens himself is about to leave. He hasn’t asked for payment, but then again he hasn’t really done much – Alex figures the bandage was just to humor him. But for some reason Alexander can’t let him leave.

 

"Wait," he says quickly, just as Laurens reaches the door, and at the same time Alex realizes he hasn’t thought of anything else to stay. There's a sting of panic in his gut, and he prays that John won't turn around.

 

But ever-obedient Laurens, bless him, pauses in the doorway. "What," he says, and he looks somewhat irritated.

 

"Uh," Alex replies, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck, "thank you for coming over. I know you weren't on duty, and you…you didn't have to do that. I appreciate it. Just wanted you to know." He's stammering, fucking _stammering_ , and with fleeting frustration he ponders what it is about this John Laurens that makes him so…not himself. He brushes it off, instead forcing himself to focus on Laurens's face, except that he finds his eyes drawn, for some reason, to the curve of that lower lip, which is possibly even more embarrassing than the stammering, and he hastily yanks away his gaze.

 

"Yeah. It's no big deal," Laurens is saying, except Alexander can tell from the faint vexation in his gaze that he doesn't really mean it. And Alex doesn't blame him, exactly, because of _course_ it's a hassle to walk three blocks during your free time to clean up the mess of a person you don't particularly care for or speak to outside of work, not to mention that parking is practically nonexistent on this street and said person has been acting like a complete _asshole_ —

 

"Hey, let me buy you lunch. To say thanks," Alex blurts instead. It is in this moment that his thoughts spring into an unending chorus of _what the fuck are you doing_ and Alexander has to channel all his willpower to keep from taking it back.

 

But the damage is done, and Laurens turns to face him, then, crossing his arms across his chest and leaning into the doorframe, head tilted like a dog's on a hunt. His eyes are narrow with something like scrutiny, but the hard edge has melted off his gaze. "Yeah," he says finally, "lunch would be nice, actually."

 

Alexander blinks, realizing that he hadn't been expecting Laurens to say yes. "Cool," he says, and Laurens nods, uncrossing his arms and shoving his hands into his coat pockets as he turns away. There's something bashful about the gesture. Alex could swear he spies a smile tugging at those lips as Laurens steps out the door.

 

(It's only later, after Alex has hobbled to the kitchen for a cup of tea and settled himself on the sofa with a sitcom on low volume, that he begins to wonder why he feels like a high schooler with a new crush.)

 

* * *

 

John Laurens stands on the steps of Hamilton’s apartment building, hands in his coat pockets, and thinks. The spring wind is chilly and persistent, here and there tearing stray pieces of hair from his bun as it snaps around his head. His skin stings a little where the loose curls whip at his cheeks.

 

God. Lunch with Alexander Hamilton. Part of him – a faraway part of him he doesn't want to think about – is tempted to make this into a big deal. _It's not, it's not_ , _it's not a big deal_ , he chides himself, and it _isn't_ , not if he keeps his feet on the ground and his head out of the clouds like he always has, not if he shakes off the feeling like he always does. _It’s not a big deal_.

 

He squares his shoulders, takes off down the sidewalk, and tries not to wonder what exactly he just agreed to.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey not to be whiny but if u have thoughts about this fic please consider leaving a quick comment? thanks love yall
> 
> also heads up its summer break now so hopefully ill have lots more time to write + im planning on camp nanowrimo in july so youll be seeing lots more of this fic in the next 2 months


	3. when he sees me (he wants to again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laurens, Hamilton, and the Great Not-Date of 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, last month: you'll be seeing a lot more of this fic :)  
> me, this month: lol SIKE
> 
> chapter title from [waitress](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l290icCebDk)

It's a week later that Alexander Hamilton slides into the seat across from John's at the pie shop on third avenue, bundled up to his ears in a worn coat and a beanie and a thick cable-knit scarf that looks suspiciously handmade. His hands, too, are mittened when he removes them from his pockets, which is excessive in John's opinion; it's well into June, teetering on the edge of summer, although he supposes this week _has_ been unseasonably chilly. He's about to comment, but Hamilton's mouth – as is its usual state – is already open and running.

 

"Afternoon, Laurens," he says cheerily. "Look, I know I'm ten minutes late and I'm really sorry, but it's 'cause the subway thing wouldn't accept my fucking metro card and I had to go all the way around and have them open the gate for me, and like– you probably know how those lines at the information booths can be. I'm not making up excuses by the way, I swear. And the dude who helped me had like _fifty_ keys on his keyring and he couldn't figure out which one we needed, like— shit, I almost missed the train. I'm here now, though, anyway, and uh, I'm sorry." He shoots John a sunny grin, strips off his gloves, and begins methodically unwinding that scarf from his neck.

 

John blinks, a little taken aback, a little amused at this rapid-fire monologue. He notices that the color of the wool jumps abruptly to a darker shade as the scarf reaches its end, like the knitter ran out of yarn and had to start on a new ball. Not something you'd sell in a store; handmade, then. "Do you _knit_?" is all he can think to say.

 

It's Hamilton's turn to blink. Then he glances down at the scarf in his lap and laughs. "What? No, Eliza made this. Trust me, I'm not this crafty."

 

His eyes are twinkling with humor, but all John hears is _Eliza, Eliza, Eliza,_ and for some reason his bubble deflates a bit.

 

“So, I’ve never been here before.” Hamilton flips upon the plastic-laminated menu. What’s good?”

 

John tells him what’s good – personally he loves the Polka Dot Peach Pie and the Lulu’s Strawberry Dream – but Hamilton, being Hamilton, orders something from a corner of the menu which John never even looks at. Ten minutes later the server sets down two plates, one with John’s slice of cherry-and-cream and one with Hamilton’s...whatever that is.

 

“That’s not– is that pie?” John asks.

 

Hamilton gives him a grin. It’s the kind of grin which shouts _troublemaker_ , a little crooked, a little defiant, and it lights up Alexander’s face like a lightbulb. If this had still been high school, John would’ve steered clear of a smile like that. But on twenty-seven-year-old Hamilton it _works_ , somehow, works with the quirk of his dark eyebrows and the lines at the corners of his coffee-black eyes. Charming. That’s what it is.

 

“Nah, it’s not,” he says, and John has almost forgotten what they were talking about. “It’s _tembleque_ . Coconut pudding from Puerto Rico.” He shovels a forkful into his mouth and lets out an ecstatic groan. “Aw, _hell_ yeah. We had similar stuff where I’m from. Didn’t know they sold it here.”

 

 _Where I’m from._ “Where _are_ you from?”

 

“Caribbean.”

 

John scoops up a bite of his own (all-American, of course) cherry-and-cream pie. "Specifically?"

 

"Nevis. Pretty small, pretty unheard of. Devastated by a hurricane some decade ago." Hamilton's Adam's apple bobs as he swallows, thickly, and John thinks he catches a hitch in his voice on the word _hurricane_. He doesn’t press it.

 

"So," Hamilton says quickly, "we went to the same high school, did you know that? Looked you up in my yearbook. John Laurens, class of 2006."

 

"Yeah, I know you," John replies around a mouthful of pie. "Recognized you the first time you stepped into my clinic."

 

Alexander blinks. "You recognized me?"

 

"'Course I did. First junior to get elected student council treasurer, right? How could I forget you?"

 

 _Whoops._ Alarm bells go off in his brain. _How could I forget you?_ That’s weird. He shouldn’t have said that. _Should_ he have said that? He can’t decide and he averts his gaze.

 

Alexander, bless him, doesn't seem to notice. "Also first sophomore to win the nomination for student body president," he adds brightly, and John doesn't miss the way his spine straightens and his chest puffs out a little as he says it. He is so small, but he makes up for it with his relentless pride and it's somehow just this side of endearing.

 

"Hmm," is all John says. Then, "Well, that Burr kid you were up against _was_ better at speeches. He won fair and square, I think."

 

Alexander frowns. It makes the skin between his eyebrows pop into tiny folds. "'Scuse me?"

 

"I'm just saying. Burr was better at giving speeches than you."

 

" _What?_ Why?" He's lain down his fork, looks offended, like this has truly never occurred to him. It's cocky, in a way, but his expression is too much like a kicked puppy's for John to feel irritated. Instead he bites back a smile.

 

"Well," he begins carefully, "he's really calm, and collected, and his voice is kind of velvety. Like, soothing, y'know? You, on the other hand— you were so energetic, and…intense. It was kind of hard to look you in the face sometimes." _Too bright, too brilliant, like trying to stare at the sun,_ he thinks, but he doesn't say that. "That's why he beat you."

 

Hamilton is quiet. "Oh," he says finally, "I guess that's true," but the tone of his voice betrays his disbelief.

 

He is very proud, if anything. Stubborn, too. Not unlike John himself.

 

“So,” he continues, before Hamilton can decide that their friendship is unsalvageable, “tell me about yourself, huh?”

 

He figures Alexander loves talking, so he probably loves talking about himself, too. Turns out he’s wrong. Something about Alexander’s posture sinks back down, closing in on itself, like he thinks that if he makes himself small enough he can avoid the question.

 

“Um, well, I’m a teacher,” he says carefully. He prods at his pudding with the side of his fork.

 

John, who had been stirring a second packet of sugar into his coffee, looks up in surprise. “Dude, for real? What do you teach?”

 

“High school English.”

 

“Wow. Okay. High school.”

 

Alexander arches an eyebrow at him. “You know, it always goes like this. I tell people I’m a high school teacher, and then they say, ‘High school,’ in that specific tone. Makes you think, huh?”

 

“No, I just mean–” John feels his cheeks heat. “That takes some guts, teaching high schoolers.”

 

“It’s really not that bad.” Hamilton takes a sip of his lemonade (of course, leave it to him to show up in a scarf and mittens and order a _cold_ drink). “I think...Maybe because it was such a tough time for me, but I really want to help out young people. That sounds kind of cliché. I just mean I want to make an impression on them, give them something they can take with them for the rest of their lives, you know? Leave a legacy, I guess. Oh, yeah, that’s my biggest fear– being forgotten. That and failure.”

 

John feels a smile tugging at the corner of his own mouth. “I’ve got a fear of failure too.”

 

“Don’t we all.” Hamilton gives him a dry grin, sets down his lemonade and leans forward on his elbows. “So, doctor. Tell me about _you_.”

 

John does. He’s twenty-eight, born and raised in South Carolina. Worked as a nurse for three years, has been a full-time gynecologist for one. He’s got five siblings. He doesn’t really have a ton of friends because he’s never been very social. What else? On Friday nights he orders Chinese takeout. He hates horror movies.

 

Alexander tilts his head. “So, you’re not social, but you’re sitting here have lunch with me, who you don’t even know.”

 

John shrugs. “Best offer I was gonna get,” and Hamilton laughs a little.

 

“So, no girlfriend or boyfriend, then?” he asks.

 

“Nope.” John pops the P. “Girls are pretty much off the table for me anyway.”

 

Yeah. He watches Alexander’s face, watches the words sink in as his brow furrows. It’s funny, that furrow. The frown extends beyond his forehead and tugs at his mouth, pursing his lips like he’s concentrating really hard. That’s charming, too.

 

Then his face brightens again. “Oh! So you– you’re gay?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“That’s not, like.” John clears his throat. He thinks his cheeks might be flushing, but he decides not to dwell on it. “A problem for you, is it?”

 

“No! No, God no.” And John thinks, just for a second, that he sees a tiny little smile nudging at Hamilton’s lips and a flash of excitement in those coffee-brown eyes. Then he figures he’s probably just making things up.

 

And there’s a little smile at his _own_ lips, too, and a little flutter in his heart, because he’s never told anyone that he’s gay so soon after meeting them and it feels a little like an accomplishment. He grew up in ultra-conservative South Carolina, with a dad who was less than ecstatic about having a gay kid for a son, in a society where he had to suss out the homophobia in everyone he met and pinpoint the places he was safe. But for some reason, John already trusts Alexander. He doesn’t feel like he’s got anything to hide. It’s not like he met Hamilton yesterday – he met him ten years ago, technically – but it’s also not like he _knows_ him, or anything. But still. Alexander’s like a magnet, and John feels drawn to him, for some reason, just as he felt drawn to him in senior year of high school.

 

He thinks he’s smiling for real, now, and he smiles through the rest of the afternoon, too. 

* * *

 

It’s another week later that Alex and Eliza stand outside John’s clinic for her second sonogram, another week into an unseasonably chilly June which has involved too many coats and not enough sundresses, much to Eliza’s chagrin. Alexander knows she doesn’t _totally_ mind the jacket thing, though – she got him the same puffy Patagonia jacket as she has for Christmas last year, and he knows that secretly (not _so_ secretly) she loves that they’ve got matching winter garb. Hers is turquoise, and Alexander’s is dark blue with a rip in the side, and somehow they both ended up wearing them today and they didn’t even _plan_ on it. God. Alexander thinks the two of them might be kind of obnoxious, sometimes.

 

The weather hasn’t stopped Eliza from wearing a tank top _underneath_ said jacket, though. She was smoothing it obsessively during their walk from the subway to the clinic, and she’s smoothing it now, her palms lingering for just a second over her belly. She’s starting to show a little, the sweetest little swell which Alex only sees because he knows what her stomach usually looks like. But still. Their baby’s _growing_.

 

 _Their baby_. She is thirteen weeks along and the words still have a foreign twinge to them when he tosses them around in his head. Foreign, maybe, but a good kind of foreign – like an artsy foreign film or intricate foreign gastronomy. He bites back the sudden urge to smile.

 

They reach the door of the clinic a minute later, and Alex glances over at Eliza as they stop before it. She’s moved on to fussing with her hair, twirling the tips around her finger or brushing a lock behind the shell of her ear, and Alex has known her long enough to know that these are her nervous habits – jittery, anxious motions, to distract herself from the trouble or to release the nervous energy in her hands. Alex does the same thing. His hands are never still, really.

 

“You good?” he asks.

 

She tucks her hair behind her ear, again, for what Alex figures is the fiftieth time. “Sure,” she says, but her tone says _Absolutely not_. She’s being kind of ridiculous and he’s not sure why.

 

Alex is the one who should be nervous – this is the first sonogram _he’s_ going to. He missed the first because of a last-minute parent-teacher conference he really _couldn’t_ reschedule, not when that student’s dad had taken time off work to drive into the city and meet with him, and would she _please_ forgive him if he skipped the first sonogram and acted extra excited at the second to make up for it?

 

She’d been mad, sure. But Eliza doesn’t ever stay mad at him long.

 

He feels another little flutter in his belly as he and Eliza step into the warmth of the clinic’s waiting room. He’s excited for the sonogram, but he’s excited about seeing John again, too, even though – or maybe because – it’s only been a week since their lunch date. _It wasn’t a_ date, he tells himself sternly. _Stop calling it that_.

 

John. Who is gay. Information which shouldn’t interest Alex as much as it definitely, definitely does.

 

“Why are you smiling like that?” he hears Eliza say, and he hurriedly presses his lips together to hide the grin he hadn't realized was on his face.

 

“Nothing. Just – excited for the sonogram.”

 

“Sure.” The side-eye she’s giving him and the lilting tone of her voice tells him she doesn’t really believe him, but she lets it go as she bounds up to the receptionist behind the counter. It’s the same girl as last time – she’s got a headful of dark springy curls and fire engine-red lipstick and a plastic name tag which reads _Maria_. Alex recognizes her from their last appointment, but he thinks, vaguely, that he maybe also recognizes her from somewhere else. But he can’t place it. He’s not really good with faces.

 

She and Eliza have launched into an animated conversation, all moving hands and wide smiles. Alex can’t say he’s surprised. Eliza’s always been great at making friends.

 

“So, you’re buds with the secretary now?” he asks as she finally takes a seat beside him.

 

Eliza’s cheeks flush strawberry-pink. “We got to talking after my last sonogram, and she gave me her number, and now she wants to get coffee together. She’s – uh, she’s cool. I like her a lot.” She halts for a beat, spots the sideways grin on Alex’s face. Then, “Don’t tease me.”

 

“I’m not,” Alex says, even though he totally is. But Maria, speak of the devil, calls, “Schuyler, you’re up,” before he can push it any farther, and suddenly he’s got other things to think about. The sonogram. The baby. And John, of course John. And if Alex’s pulse kicks up at that, well – that’s hardly _his_ fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally supposed to be part of 1 chapter but it was long as shit so i'm halving it, that's why the ending's kind of abrupt. i'll put up the next chapter on sunday, until then pls tell me what u think of this one & remember to subscribe xx


	4. she loves me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the sonogram; you got me helpless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from [she loves me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_Grk3wuyik) (obviously)

John Laurens, as it is, has _not_ been looking forward to Eliza’s sonogram, and not just because he’d rather be at home with a cup of tea and a cheesy sitcom than in the clinic. At first he figured he was dreading seeing Hamilton again, but that’s not it – he’s dreading seeing Hamilton _with Eliza._ Which, the more he thinks about it, makes so sense.

 

And at the same time, some part of him – some part he understands maybe even less – _desperately_ wants to talk to Hamilton again, wants to hear his mouth running a mile a minute, wants to hear him laugh at something which wasn’t funny until he laughed at it. He’s hooked on Hamilton’s electricity, somehow, on his voice and his grin and the way he talks. The thought of that voice ignites something fluttery in John’s stomach, and he hurriedly pushes it down, down, down as Hamilton and Eliza step inside.

 

They look the same as ever, as _beautiful_ as ever, Eliza with her rosy cheeks and tiny doll hands and smooth-as-glass cascade of hair, and Hamilton with his wide dark eyes and a ponytail so messy it’s almost artful. There’s the ghost of a smirk resting on his lips, like he and Eliza are at the tail end of an inside joke John isn’t in on, but he’s starting to think that maybe Hamilton always looks like that. And oh, God, are they wearing matching _jackets_?

 

They’re not holding hands, at least. That’s good.

 

It’s not _good_ , he chides himself a second later. It’s not _anything_. It doesn’t matter.

 

But even as he thinks this thought and shoves the other deeper into the back of his brain, a little part of John is starting to wonder why he cares so much, why he notices those things, why maybe it _does_ matter. But it’s just a _little_ part. At least, that’s what he’s telling himself.

 

“Good morning,” he says, and he smiles, even though his heart’s not really in it.

 

“Hi,” Hamilton and Eliza say at the same time, same intonation, then look over at each other and grin. John’s heart sinks a little lower.

 

It takes five minutes to set them up, the machine powered on and Eliza stretched out on the exam table with her shirt rucked up over her belly. “So, for this sonogram,” John begins absently, “I can have the software snap some pictures and print them out for you, if you’d like.” He reaches for the jelly. “This’ll be cold, by the way.”

 

“I know,” says Eliza.

 

“They always say that in movies,” Hamilton notes, and John shoots him a sideways grin over his shoulder.

 

The screen lights up. John steals a glance at Hamilton and Eliza; Hamilton’s watching the screen with his lips slightly parted, head cocked to the side almost curiously, and Eliza’s grinning like she’s just won the lottery. John’s always loved this part, showing expecting parents their baby and watching their faces light up like fireworks. But something about these parents being Hamilton and Eliza feels different, feels... _less_. There’s a twinge of bitterness in John’s gut at the sight of their smiling faces, a twinge which doubles over into guilt when he realizes what it is he’s feeling.

 

“So, would you like to know the sex?” he says hurriedly, forcing the thoughts out of his head.

 

Hamilton’s eyes brighten even more, if that’s even possible, and he says, “Yeah!” at the exact same time that Eliza says, “No, thank you.”

 

Alexander turns to her and raises his eyebrows. “ _No_?”

 

“No! I want it to be a surprise. I told you that, remember?”

 

“Yeah, I remember, I was just– hoping you changed your mind.”

 

“Nope.” Eliza’s eyes are shining. “Think about how fun it’ll be! Painting the nursery cute gender-neutral colors, having people guess the sex at the baby shower, finally finding out after nine months? It’s like a Christmas present, but with higher stakes.”

 

“Colors aren’t gendered, ‘Liza. We can do the nursery blue even if it’s a girl, I know that’s what you want.”

 

“C’mon, Alexander. Please?” She takes his arm and pleads with those big dark eyes, and John finds himself wondering how Hamilton ever wins an argument with this girl. Maybe he never does, because the next moment he heaves a sigh and mutters, “Fine.”

 

“Good.” Eliza pats his arm, and when she grins up at John he can see a hint of triumph in her smile. “We definitely want those pictures, though.”

 

Ten minutes later, when the jelly has been wiped from Eliza’s skin and they’ve shrugged on their coats and John has assured them that Maria will give them the photos on their way out, John is finally turning back to his clipboard, looking forward to spending just a couple minutes alone before his next appointment. That is, at least, until he feels someone catch him by the wrist.

 

“Wait, Laurens.” Alexander. Something sparks under John’s skin beneath Hamilton’s palm and races up his forearm like a firework. His heart has started racing, too, knocking furiously against his ribs, and he blinks a couple times, trying to focus on what Hamilton’s saying, which is, “Me and some friends are gonna get drinks at this new bar next week, and I was thinking you might wanna come? You know, since you said you don’t really have friends and all that. Might be cool to meet some new people.”

 

There’s a hint of that teasing tone in his voice, at odds with what he’s offering, but John is taken aback anyway by how kind this is. How kind _he_ is. How he didn’t know this about Hamilton, this kindness. He blinks again, tries to get back into his head. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

 

“Awesome.” Alexander gives him that lopsided grin, and something flutters in John’s chest. “I’ll text you about it, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

The door shuts, and John turns and sags against it. Fuck. He's so fucked.

* * *

 

It’s three hours later that Alexander sits at the Schuylers’ dining room table with Eliza and Peggy, who, somewhere between this morning and ten minutes ago, have decided that they are going to make a scrapbook chronicling the baby’s most important moments – starting with the printouts of the sonogram they picked up at their last appointment. Alexander is included in this _they_ who will be making this scrapbook, and he’s not one hundred-percent sure how he feels about that.

 

“Have you guys thought about names?” says Peggy, who is doodling a patch of cartoon daffodils in the corner of one page. Her pen is such a bright shade of yellow that it almost hurts to look at.

 

One of Eliza’s hands skates down to her belly and rests there. She’s been doing that a lot lately, especially since she started showing.

 

“It’s too early to think about names,” she says.

 

“Oh, yeah, but you know what would make it easier?” Alex cuts in. “Knowing the sex.”

 

“God, get over it already, Hamilton.” Peggy rolls her eyes, but Alex pretends not to see, which he knows will vex her more than a reaction. “Besides, there’s nothing to find out. You’re having a girl. The Schuylers _only_ have girls.”

 

“Shut up, Pegs,” he replies evenly, and Eliza stifles a laugh behind her hand. “That’s bull, anyway. Have you met your dad?”

 

“Yeah, and he’s the only dude out of _six_ siblings. And our grandma’s one of four girls, too. Precedent’s been set, man.”

 

“Bull,” he says again, but he’s pretty sure he believes it.

 

Peggy wags her pen at Eliza. “Do you think she’ll look like you?”

 

Eliza grins. “I bet she’ll look like Alex.”

 

“God, I hope not.” Peggy flips her page. “I hope she looks like you, ‘Liza. You were such a cute baby.”

 

“How would _you_ know that, Peggy?”

 

“‘Cause Dad showed me your baby pictures a few years ago. I mean, granted, some of them are _kind_ of embarrassing, but on the whole–”

 

“Can we please not talk about my baby pictures?”

 

Peggy turns back to Alex. She’s got that crazy grin of hers on. It’s the kind of grin only Peggy – with her sparkling eyes and wild curls – can pull off. “Holy shit, Alex, you gotta see ‘em. Hang on.”

 

She pushes back her chair and takes off down the hallway, presumably to fetch said baby pictures, even as Eliza calls out an exasperated “ _Peggy!_ ” after her.

 

Alex grins. Sometimes, when he’s around Eliza and Peggy at the same time, he wishes he’d had a little sister. He hardly even counts his older brother as family anymore, not when they haven’t spoken to each other in years, not when James was always such a dick, even when they were little. Alex had been jealous of the Schuyler sisters’ bond in the first few years he’d known them – he’d never met three people who knew each other better than they knew themselves, who somehow always ended up on the same wavelength despite the fundamental differences in their personalities. And they weren’t even _full_ sisters, either– they shared their dad, but they’d all come from different surrogates. And then there was their bond with their father to be jealous of, too; from what Eliza’d told him, they told him everything, trusted him with anything. Alex had never had that, either. His dad walked out when he was four.

 

The jealousy faded as Alexander got to know the Schuylers, but even now a touch of it still lingers, along with something like regret at the fact that he was never close to his brother and has probably lost contact with him permanently at this point. It isn’t really fair. But then again, a lot of stuff in his life isn’t fair.

 

He glances back to Eliza, who is studying his face. “What are you thinking about?” she asks.

 

He blinks. “Nothing, I guess.”

 

“Mm. Hand me the green washi tape, please.”

 

They cut and glue in silence for a while, the only sounds the snips of their scissors and the fluttering of scrapbook paper. Alexander has _no_ idea how to scrapbook, but he knows the Schuylers are the resident scrapbook experts of Manhattan, so he figures he’s in good hands. He kind of likes it, too– the mindless smoothing of paper over glue, always neat, always pretty, following Eliza’s instructions to the letter and having something lovely to show for it. He’s fell into the lull of the silence, and he’s just started to enjoy it when Eliza suddenly says, “Oh!”

 

He hears the delight in her voice, and she shoots up from her seat, stepping around the corner of the table to stand in front of him. "It’s happening again. Check this out—"

 

She lifts the hem of her shirt up over her stomach, halting at the swell of her breasts, and there it is: a bump, small and smooth and rising sweetly from the plane of her belly, the proud pucker of her navel perched atop it like a crown on a queen's head. Eliza grabs his hand in hers and places it against the curve of her belly, just at the top of the swell. Her skin is warm beneath his fingers.

 

“Wait a sec,” Eliza says. He looks up at her, raises an eyebrow. And then–

 

Alexander feels his heart jump beneath his ribs. He thinks he hears a strangled little gasp spring from his lips. Because, all of a sudden, there is movement beneath his hand, beneath Eliza’s skin. Kicking. The baby’s _kicking_.

 

Suddenly, just like that, their baby is not just a plus on a pregnancy test, not just an abstract blur on a screen. It's _their baby_ , touchable and tangible, a little person with size and weight and a mind of their own. The reality of it crashes down around Alexander's ears, hits him like a freight train. They’re having a _baby_ . A baby with _legs_ to _kick with_.

 

Without thinking he leans forward and touches his forehead to Eliza's belly, his _child_ , nothing between them but a layer of skin and tissue, and registers, dimly, that he’s grinning like an idiot.

 

He feels Eliza’s fingers wind into his hair, meandering across his scalp, dragging soft and gentle at his roots. His mother used to do that for him, when he was little, pet across his head with the flat of her hand until he fell asleep. He leans into it, now. Her hand is still covering his on her belly, and he feels her fingers curl around his own as she murmurs, "I love you."

 

He smiles against her skin, hums, "Love you too, 'Liza," into the soft slope of her belly. The fingertips in his hair still. For a moment she is quiet.

 

"No, I mean—" she begins, and cuts off just as abruptly. Then there's a sharp little tug on his hair as she mutters, "Oh, fuck, get up here, would you."

 

He draws back a few inches and swallows the lump in his throat. He’s still smiling – God, he doesn’t think he’s ever smiled this hard in his life – until he catches sight of Eliza’s expression. All the excitement, all the brightness has vanished from her, like someone’s pulled the plug on a lightbulb, and Alex feels his own grin fall from his face. He sits back up straight in his chair, takes his hand away from her belly, meets her gaze.

 

"I mean I'm in love with you," she bites out.

 

All the breath in Alexander's chest leaves him in one _whoosh_ . He blinks, once, twice, tries to think of something to say to her. _What?_ "Eliza…"

 

"Don't." She holds up a hand. “Just...hear me out, please, okay?” Inhale. Exhale. Her eyebrows draw together.

 

“That night, when…” Her hand drifts to her belly, and she falters. “Something kind of special happened for me, Alex. And I know we were drunk off our asses, and it wasn’t...you know, spectacular sex or anything, but it– it _meant_ something to me. It did. And I realized I– the way I feel about you, it’s not–”

 

She breaks off, takes a breath. “It’s not what I always thought it was. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with you. And now it’s been months and it still hasn’t gone away and I just need to know, Alex, that night– did it mean something for you, too?”

 

Alexander always feels like he’s brimming with words, shivering with everything he wants to say, like his head is a brain-shaped encyclopaedia of descriptions and facts and feelings. Alexander’s always had the right words for everything. Words have always been _easy_ for him.

 

But suddenly Eliza is telling him that she loves him, and she is asking him if he loves her too, and all of Alexander’s words have left him and he is empty and bone-dry as a desert which has not been rained upon in years. It could be the shock, or it could be that he knows what her face will look like after he says the thing he knows he needs to say, and he wants to avoid that look at all costs. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

 

And unfortunately – or fortunately, maybe, sparing him the explanation – this is Eliza, and if there is one person who has never needed to hear his words to know what he’s feeling it’s her. He knows what she’s seeing on his face. _No_.

 

“Okay,” she whispers, and Alex sees her face crumple.

 

“You’re so important to me,” he says hoarsely. Maybe to make her feel better, maybe because it’s true. “But we were drunk.” _I don’t even remember it._ “And it wasn’t…” _It was just sex_ . “I mean, it was good, but we were _drunk_ , and now we have this baby and everything and that's great, but I didn’t feel...that. I _don’t_ feel that.” _I don’t love you the way you want me to._ “I love you, Eliza, but not– Not like that.”

 

His voice catches on the word _that_ , and he thinks, inexplicably, of John Laurens’s freckles.

 

“Okay,” Eliza says again. She closes her eyes. “I knew that already, I think. I just needed...to make sure. So I can – maybe – get closure, I guess, move on–”

 

Somewhere near the last sentence her lower lip launched into a precarious wobble. She bites down on it, now, determinedly screws her eyes shut as she turns away. Alexander clenches his fists, the dig of his nails in the skin of his palms cutting through the fog in his brain. His heart feels as though it is trying to squeeze its way up his throat. “I’m sorry,” he says in a small voice.

 

“S’okay,” Eliza replies, even as he sees her drag the back of her hand across her cheeks. “It’s not your fault.”

 

Even though it is, even though she’s standing here crying because of him — because she loves him, and he can't even give her that. He wonders if he's really so much better than his father, in the end.

 

It’s at this moment that Peggy Schuyler enters the room, her arms cradling a stack of crisp faux-leather volumes which Alex figures are photo albums. “Had to dig around the attic for a bit,” she says, “but I’m like, ninety percent sure me and Eliza’s baby pictures are in one of these. Dunno ‘bout Angie’s, but she probably wasn’t a cute baby anyway.”

 

Then she peeks out from behind the photo albums and spots the tears on Eliza’s cheeks, the furrow in Alex’s brow and the tension in the space between them. Her lips turn down at the corners. “Aw, shit, ‘Liza. What’d I miss?”

 

“Nothing.” Eliza runs her fingers beneath her eyes again, her voice breaking across the second syllable. “Nothing, Peg.”

 

And it’s this – the fact that Eliza, strong, honest, kind Eliza, can’t even bring herself to blame Alexander for her tears – it’s this which makes his heart crack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick question do u guys prefer short chapters posted faster or long chapters with longer waits between them? pls let me know in the comments !! 
> 
> & also like yknow tell me how u feel about this fic i thrive on interaction w/ readers 
> 
> love u xx


	5. like i know my own mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a revel on a hot night; angelica schuyler; complicated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol hey im alive, nanowrimo Whomst
> 
> this is short cuz i cut 2500 words off of it and those will be the next chapter, which i'll have up in a week

Alexander met Eliza on a hot night in September, the kind of night where the light is soft and dreamlike and the air is thick with lingering heat, like summer’s returned for an encore performance. The September of his junior year. His first year in New York.

It was a high school dance, a real, bass-thrumming-at-top-volume high school dance. Eliza had been swathed in a little turquoise thing, mock-silk, leaning against the wall in the corner of the gym like she was trying to become one with the wallpaper. Maybe she’d thought this would make her invisible; all it did was make her stand out, one of the only people not crowding the dance floor. Maybe, he thinks later, it was that dress of hers that had caught Alexander’s eye – the way the fabric shimmered in the dim light, catching fleetingly the bright spots the disco ball sent spinning across the room. Like a school of fish in a sunlit stream, he’d thought.

Or maybe what drew him to Eliza was the fact that he, too, had been trying to blend in with the walls at that dance. Maybe it was that which made him march up to her and take up position against the wall beside her.

She looked over at him. “Ugh,” she said.

“Sorry?” he said.

“I said, _ugh_ . You seriously drink that crap?” It took him a moment to realize she was talking about the lukewarm Starbucks he had in his hand. She tilted her head to catch the name on his cup. “ _Alexander?_ ”

“Well, I mean. Caffeine’s caffeine, right?” He shrugged, just to let her know that he didn’t care about this conversation or the fact that she had begun it by insulting his taste in coffee. This was junior year of high school, and to care about anything in high school was absolutely uncool. Not that Alexander cared about _that_ , either, of course. Except around pretty girls.

“Sure,” she said, “but it’s also _homecoming._ Who the heck brings a pumpkin-spice latte to a school dance?”

 _Who the heck_. Yeah, she was kind of weird.

He shrugged again. “Needed a breather. There’s a Starbucks across the street.”

“I’d need a breather, too, if I were tucked inside a suit that’s obviously too small for me.”

“Excuse me, but I’ll have you know I bought this extremely classy number at Goodwill, so maybe think before you speak to me that way.”

“Touché.”

To say they met that day isn’t quite true, but then again most memories aren’t quite true after a while. Alexander knew already, before that day, who Eliza was, mostly because they shared a couple classes but also because she was a pretty girl and he made it his business to know pretty girls. She always had that polished and pristine look about her, and something a little whimsical too, like the way they draw pixies in children’s books. Maybe because of how her hair was impossibly dark and impossibly shiny and impossibly soft-looking, and the way it contrasted with her pearly-pale skin, the hard line of her jaw and nose and cheekbone.

But for all that cheekbone she wasn’t much of a talker, and in the month of school they’d had she had neglected to raise her hand so much as once. So to hear her talk – and even more than that, to hear her _criticize_ him like he was any of her business – meant he had to rewrite everything he knew about her in his head.

“So,” he said, and he let his voice slide into a practiced velvet-soft tone, let his lashes lower a millimeter or two so he could gaze at her through them. “You here alone?”

“No.” She took a sip of her punch. Her lip gloss left a shining pink ring along the plastic rim of the cup. “I’m here with my sister. Angelica Schuyler? She’s the one in the pink. Dazzling the room over there.”

“So, you’re here alone.”

She shrugged. “Pretty much.”

All of a sudden he felt a pang of sympathy in his gut. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t have anyone to talk to. She, for all her hair and cheek and jawline, was a lot like him. He didn’t feel like flirting with her anymore. He felt like taking her under his wing.

“Hey,” he said. “I never got the rest of your name.”

She gave him that little rosebud smile that he would come to know so well, extended one dainty, thin-fingered fairy hand and let him take it in his weak seventeen-year-old grip.

“Elizabeth Schuyler,” she said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Elizabeth Schuyler,” he said, “you wanna dance?”

* * *

But this isn’t junior year of high school, and they’re not seventeen, and for all the times today that Alexander’s memory has snagged on that dance, he can’t shake the fact that he and Eliza are two adults who are going to have a baby with each other. Two adults who, as it happens, are about to spend a couple hundred on baby paraphernalia.

Their knees bump beneath the Schuyler’s dining room table as they stare at Eliza’s laptop, but that’s not what bothers Alex. It’s her face – the blankness behind her smile, the hollowness of her laugh. He’s known her for ten-odd years, and he can tell when she’s putting up a front. She’s trying to look like nothing’s troubling her, which must mean something is.

It’s also Eliza’s older sister, back from her work trip to London, which is bothering him. Angelica Schuyler hovers behind them, one hand curled around the back of Eliza’s chair and the other settled on her hip as she watches them scroll through page after page of infant products on the Target website. Alexander can practically feel her eyes burning holes in the back of his skull; he knows she doesn’t hate him, exactly, but she’s always been weary of him, weary of anyone who gets close to her baby sisters. It’s not like she tries to hide it from him. The judgement seeps out of her with everything she does.

Especially now that he’s got her sister pregnant. Probably not doing much for his popularity in Angelica’s book.

“These are kind of cute.” Eliza’s pulled up a picture of a tiny pair of shoes, faux-leather and embroidered with smiling animals. “Look, you can get lions, or alligators, or polar bears. What do you think?”

“Those are nice, ‘Liza,” Angelica says.

“Which do you like better? Lions or bears?”

It takes Alex a second to realize she’s speaking to him, and for some reason a spark of irritation flares in his stomach. “No offense, but what does a baby need shoes for?”

Neither of them reply.

“Alexander,” Angelica begins coolly, “can I speak to you for a moment?”

She leads him to the kitchen, shoves him inside with one hand and slams the door behind them with the other. Alexander knocks his elbow against the counter (gleaming, granite) right on his funny bone, and he winces, rubs at the sore spot. “The hell’s your problem?”

“The hell’s _your_ problem?” Angelica rounds on him, arms crossed over her chest and eyes full of fire. “My sister tells you she loves you and you go talking to her like _that_?”

“Oh, so–” He swallows. The words feel thick in his mouth. “She told you, huh?”

“What, you thought she wouldn’t?”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He’d forgotten that the Schuyler sisters tell each other everything – or maybe he’d just hoped that they maybe didn’t.

“What did you want me to do? Lie and say I liked her back?”

That stumps her, for maybe a second, and then she snaps, “No, but it wouldn’t hurt to be careful with her feelings for a while.”

“All right, I know you’re the big sis, Angie, and I bet this is news to you–” She’s already rolling her eyes, which Alex ignores– “But Eliza doesn’t need you to protect her all the time. She’s tough, she can handle herself–”

“She’s not _tough_ , she’s naive and it’s always biting her in the ass.”

“Well, yeah, but she can deal with it on her own. She’s not stupid.”

“She shouldn’t have to _deal with it on her own_ all the time, Hamilton, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to protect her.”

“I’m not _saying_ there is, all I’m saying is when you try to protect her all the time she doesn’t get the chance to grow up, so give it a rest sometimes, maybe?”

“ _Stop_ telling me how to treat my sister.”

“Fine, then stop telling me how to treat my best friend.”

A few seconds tick by as they glare at each other, cold gaze on cold gaze. Alexander can feel his heart racing, feel his pulse thumping in his neck, fueled by the adrenaline that’s packaged in with his every argument. Angelica’s the one who lets up, shaking her head.

“I don’t care, frankly, what’s going on between you two. I care that _my sister_ , and _your_ best friend, Hamilton, is okay. Is that really so much to ask of you, or are you just too selfish to handle it?”

She sucks in a shaky breath and closes her eyes, collects herself. Angelica has always had a very particular way of talking, has always spoken like every word that falls from her mouth is the most important one he’ll hear that day. Alex thinks it’s because she, for all her high-cheekboned confidence and big-sister sway, is always trying to prove she’s tough – tough enough to have her fancy lawyer job, tough enough to take on the hardest cases and win, tough enough to make her way in the world like the world was made for her. Alex can see it in the way she raises her chin a fraction of an inch when she speaks; he can hear it in the way she spends more time enunciating than most New Yorkers do, the way her tongue hits every _T_ , every word cool and clipped, every syllable measured and precise. How when she steps inside the room, everything else seems to shrink, just a little bit.

God, how Alexander’s always admired that girl.

She’s looking at him that way now, chin tilted towards the sky so she’s looking down at him even though they’re the same height. “You need to talk to your best friend,” she says, in that collected tone of hers. Even when she’s angry, she’s calm. “Not for you. For her.”

“Angelica–”

“I don’t want to hear it, Alexander.” She shakes her head, so snobbish that Alex can almost _see_ the high horse she’s sitting on, and she’s looking at him so loathingly that he almost believes it’s genuine. But it’s the tiny, near-imperceptible twitch of her eyebrow which gives her away. It always is. “I’m leaving. Tell Eliza I’m getting lunch, or something. Do you want anything?”

And that gives her away, too, even though she doesn’t stay long enough to hear his answer.

She spins on her heel and storms back through the door, except that Angelica doesn’t _storm_ , she breezes. Like she’s always a little bit angry, but not committed enough to look like she means it.

 _You need to talk to your best friend._ The hell is he supposed to say to that?

_I would, but I’m not sure she’s my best friend anymore._

_I would, but I don’t think she wants to talk to me._

_I would, but I can’t because she_ is _my best friend and if I lost her I don’t know where I’d be._

It turns out, though, that avoiding conversation with your best friend and the mother of your unborn child is not as easy as it sounds. Not, Alex thinks in retrospect, that it sounded easy in the first place. And this baby stuff, scrolling through endless lists of binkies and bottles and tiny shoes shaped like animals, is wearing him out _fast_ , but he swallows down his irritation, and throws a bright smile on his face at every item Eliza adds to their cart. He knows it’s important to her. Plus, he feels bad.

“Oh, look at this one!” Eliza turns her laptop so Alexander can see the five-star mahogany crib she’s got pulled up on the screen. “So pretty, right? I like the width of the slats. Like, that sounds weird, but it looks super good. Right?” She clicks it into their cart. Their total jumps to a cool eight hundred.

“Eliza, how are you picking _all_ the most expensive stuff without even looking at the prices?” He means it to sound like teasing, but it comes out in a tone that says he really means it. He does, of course. But he didn’t need Eliza to know that.

Eliza’s brows furrow, and she scooches the computer back towards herself. “This isn’t _that_ expensive,” she mutters. “It’s twenty percent off, even.”

“It’s still easily three hundred bucks, plus tax.”

“So? I think it’s worth it. Two hundred five-star reviews, Alex, and top ratings in safety, style, and comfort! Don’t you want our baby to be safe, stylish, and comfortable?”

“Sure I do,” he says, “I just think it’s not _absolutely necessary_ to get literally the _most_ expensive one. It’s just a crib. There’s tons of others. I mean, I know they’ve gotta be safe and everything, but three hundred dollars, Eliza? It’s just a big wood basket.”

“Oh, my God. You did _not_ just call this five-star crib a _basket_.”

“Eliza. I’m being serious.” Alexander’s been fighting off his annoyance for the last twenty minutes, but he can hear it creeping into in his voice now, feel it in the way his jaw’s clenching up against his will. “You can’t just...toss around money like it’s nothing. A couple hundred here, a couple hundred there– it adds up, you know? Like, it can’t hurt to be a little smarter about these things.”

“I’m just trying to do what’s best for our baby.” Eliza’s averting her gaze, but there’s a steely edge to her words. “And I think this crib is what’s best.”

“It’s not about the _crib_ ,” Alex says exasperatedly, “it’s about how you think you can just throw money at any dilemma and have it be fixed and the real world doesn’t _work_ like that, okay, and I don’t want my kid to ever think that’s how things go because it’s _not_. And you wouldn’t know that, Eliza, would you?”

“Fine.” Her voice is cold. “Sorry if you’d rather save a couple hundred than make sure they’re safe in this crib.”

And maybe it’s that – the chill to her words, the prick he feels in his heart – which shakes something loose in Alexander, and it simmers dangerously beneath his skin. Something in his chest feels hot, like something in his gut is burning, like he’s not getting enough air. The words, then, claw their way up his throat and spill out onto his tongue before he can do anything to stop them, to stop himself.

“Well, _I’m_ sorry that _some_ of us don’t have a rich daddy to safety-cushion us into adulthood. I’m sorry that _some_ of us actually know how to be smart about money because _some_ of us didn’t have a whole lot of it when we were younger. And like, some of us don’t want our kid to grow up that way, too.”

It feels like the words suck up all the air in the space between them as he spits them out. Eliza stares at him, her lips parted like she wants to say something else but can’t think what.

“Oh,” is what she finally says, and her voice has gone soft. “Is that what this is about?”

Alexander feels all the irritation drain out of him like rainwater through a gutter. _No_ , he thinks, and for a second he sees it all clearly. It’s about how she’s in love with him and he can’t fathom why. It’s about the guilt that licks at his insides whenever he thinks about John Laurens, thinks about how he _feels_ about John Laurens. It’s about how _frustrated_ he is, how tight all this is winding him, how he feels like he’s a string on the brink of snapping. And how easy it would be to snap at Eliza, the one person he trusts to stick around no matter how bad he fucks up.

He knows how much he’s already hurt her. Hurting her, every second he doesn’t love her back. He doesn’t want to make it worse.

“Of course that’s what it’s about,” he says. “Look, I’m just trying to be a good dad, okay? Obviously I want the baby to be safe, of course I do. But I also want to teach them lessons that’ll get them somewhere in life.”

He inhales, and his breath is shaky. “We’re from different backgrounds, ‘Liza. This was always going to be complicated. I just want to provide for my child, you know, and right now this is, like...it’s kind of the only way I can. I need you to understand that.”

“Oh,” she repeats, and then, “I do understand that. But I also need _you_ to understand that I have a say in all this, too. Sometimes I feel like– I don’t know, you forget that.”

“Eliza,” he says finally.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t mean to pick a fight.”

“You did.”

“I did, maybe, a little. But it’s not– because of you, it’s because of me.”

She quarter-turns in her seat, so she’s facing him like she means it but also still has one foot out the door in this conversation. “You breaking up with me, Hamilton?”

“Look, it’s just...I’ve got a lot going on, right now, like– mentally, and obviously you’re my best friend and I know I can talk to you about anything but also I can’t, sometimes. So like. If I’m distant and weird. It’s not because of you.”

“Yeah,” she says again.

“Yeah. We good?”

“We’re good,” she says, but Alex can tell by the tightness in her voice that she doesn’t quite believe it yet.

 _You need to talk to your best friend._ But for all the words that have gone flying past in the last few minutes, neither of them have really said anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, next chapter is better and john is in it
> 
> maybe if you wanna tell me your favorite line from this? love when ppl do that


	6. take a shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> let's have another round tonight; laurens, i like you a lot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long i have depression & 3 AP classes

A word about Alexander’s friends, before John meets them.

There’s Hercules Mulligan, “but call me Herc, or plain Mulligan.” Big, burly guy, with a hard look to him like he could beat John up with a flick of his finger. They shake hands, and Mulligan’s palms are rough and calloused from things John doesn’t want to ask about; they find seats at the bar, and when Mulligan rolls his sleeves up to his elbows his forearms are all dense hair and thick muscle. But then he asks to see the drink menu and slides a pair of little round reading glasses out of his pocket, and when he grins at John his teeth are neat and square and white, and John feels himself relax. 

Second’s Lafayette, who, as coincidence would have it, is the place where John’s circle of old friends overlaps with Alexander’s. He’s know the guy since college, when he met him at a mixer for their shared school’s freshmen, also, coincidentally, at a bar. 

(John never got close to him, not really. Lafayette was the kind of guy he’d swapped greetings with between classes, the kind of guy he’d gave a terse smile to when they passed in the hallways. That was what early-twenties John had been like. Distant. Late-twenties John? He’s a little more talkative, especially when his drink starts to buzz in his veins.)

For all the years that have passed, Lafayette has changed unnoticeably. He looks smart tonight, which he always does, dolled up in a velvet blazer and pinstripe suit pants which somehow look stylish on his willowy legs (“That’s because Hercules made them, mon coeur,” and that’s how he finds out that Herc’s a tailor-in-training) and his mass of dark curls is the kind of neat John’s always fails to be. Laf lassos him into a minute of stunted small talk, catching up on the ins and outs of John’s life as he tells them.

Third, finally, is a man called Burr. Teacher at the same high school as Hamilton, which is how they met, only Burr does history, not English. Alexander tells him (whispers it, and the hairs stand up on the back of John’s neck) that the current head of the history department is sixty-four and facing retirement, and Burr’s looking to clinch the position, that that’s the way of the rumor these days. Burr’s head is shaven pearl-smooth and shiner still, and when he shakes John’s hand his grip is just the wrong side of loose, like their acquaintance is one Burr might let slip from his fist if situation dictates. He seems nice enough, of course, but John doesn’t trust Burr as far as he can spit. The way he says hello: his voice is suave and slick and it makes John shiver, an uneasy feeling settling in his gut, a voice like that slithering its way to his ears. 

And then there’s Alexander,  _ always  _ there’s Alexander, his hair knotted at the nape of his neck and his eyes starry in the bar lights. Looking at him gives John a funny feeling in his chest. He likes it, and at the same time he  _ doesn’t _ like it, doesn’t like the way it pulls him skyward when he’s always had his feet rooted in the earth. Doesn’t like the uncertainty. Doesn’t like how badly he wants to surrender to it, how badly it frightens him.

John orders a beer (“Just a beer?” says Lafayette, who is two flamingo-pink shots deep into the evening) and sips it leaning against the bar counter, and as he drinks he watches Hamilton talk to Burr.  _ Watches _ isn’t quite true, maybe, it’s more like his gaze is drawn to him, unintentionally, over and over like Alexander’s a magnet. John’s a little fuzzy in the head, so he lets his eyes settle there, follows their conversation loosely.  

Alexander’s eyes flick over Burr’s shoulder and catch on John’s, and John, who hadn’t intended to be caught staring, feels his cheeks heat. But then the corner of Alexander’s mouth lifts and he’s  _ winking _ at John, and there’s that thing in John’s chest again, that beat his heart skips when Alexander’s around.

Hamilton claps Burr on the shoulder, the way men who aren’t quite fond of each other do, politely excusing himself from the conversation before shouldering his way through the tangle of people separating John from him. He collapses against the counter beside John, mimes wiping sweat off his forehead. “Yo. God, I’m glad you’re here. Conversation with that guy, it’s like...hell, like watching paint dry, but like a million times worse. What a fuckin’  _ drag.  _ How does somebody get like that?”

John, who’s trying not to get hung up on  _ I’m glad you’re here _ , has gone a bit dizzy from the pint of Samuel Adams he’s just downed. “Like what?”

Alexander grins. “Want another beer, John?”

He says yes, and five minutes later they’ve snagged two bar stools and two beers. Alexander’s still talking (always talking) and he’s leaning in close a little, edging into John’s personal space.  _ So I can hear him over the bar music _ , is what John thinks to himself, but his pulse picks up the pace anyway. 

“The worst part is,” Hamilton’s saying, “he’s engaged. And his fiancée is like, the coolest fucking lady I ever met. She’s a teacher too, you know, that’s how they met, but not like a professor kinda teacher, a  _ volunteer _ teacher. She teaches music and dance at underfunded elementary schools around Brooklyn and she’s awesome as hell. Like? How did  _ Burr _ land her? Drives me nuts. Plus,” and this is where he takes a breath, takes a swig of his beer, “those kids, they  _ adore _ her. God. I’m gonna get her to teach my kid music and dance too.”

It just slips out,  _ my kid _ , the topic he normally dodges outside John’s clinic. He’s a little drunk, too, and drunk-Alexander’s filter is somehow even thinner than sober-Alexander’s. “Are you excited?” he asks quickly, in part because Burr really isn’t that interesting and he’s dying to switch topics. “About the baby?”

Hamilton’s quiet for a second, a rare moment where he seems to be picking his words before saying them. “Yeah,” is what he finally says. “But like. Nervous too.”

“I get that.”

“It’s just that– me, and being a dad, it doesn’t feel like those are two things that go together, y’know?”

“Really? I think you’ll be a kickass dad.”

Hamilton smiles down at the counter. “I dunno. I didn’t really have a dad. Makes me think I don’t know how to be one.”

“You didn’t have a dad?”

He hesitates. “Not really,” and then for once he doesn’t elaborate, so for once John doesn’t push it. Instead he picks at the label on his bottle, an old habit. His hand is damp from the condensation running down the glass, and he realizes how tightly he’d been clenching it.

“Well,” he says quickly, a Band-Aid over their rapidly-disintegrating conversation, “I bet your kid’s gonna love you. You’re fun. And you curse a lot. Kids love that shit.”

“Thanks. I don’t know how to play catch, though.”

“I can teach you.”

Alexander smiles again, a crooked thing, and John grins back. 

"Did you know," Alexander says then, swallowing down the last gulp of his beer, "that your accent comes out when you're drunk?"

"I'm not drunk," John says back, "and yeah, I was hoping you wouldn't mention it."

Everyone’s got a bit of their hometown that always sticks to them, and John’s is the South Carolina twang that creeps into his speech every now and then, the one he worked so hard to repress after he got away from there. John can hear it now though, on  _ hopin’ _ , in the way he dropped the G like he dropped the girl his dad made him take to junior prom. Accidentally. The G, not the girl.

"Did you know," he says, "that you've got an accent too?"

Alexander laughs, bright and clear over the thump of the bass and the rush in John's ears. It sends a thrill spinning through his stomach. For once he lets himself feel it.

"Yes," says Hamilton, "but I have an accent anyway."

That's true, John supposes. Alexander has the kind of soft, melodic accent which is prominent enough to be noticed but too vague to be pinpointed, and the mysteriousness of it is intriguing. To John, at least. "How many languages do you speak again?"

"Four."

John nearly chokes on his drink. "What was that?"

"Four. Spanish, French, Dutch but not great. And English."

"Oh. Wow."

He wants to say something else to Hamilton, except he doesn't know what. Maybe that’s the haze of alcohol fogging up his brain. "D'you want another round?" is what comes out, and then he knows it's not that.

"Yeah." Hamilton digs his hand into his pocket and pulls out a couple crumpled bills. "It's on me, all right? Be right back."

John wants to say  _ No, it's not on you _ , but then he doesn't say that either and Hamilton is already gone.

"Time to take a shot, Laurens," says a voice at his shoulder, and John nearly jumps out of his skin. Swiveling his bar stool, he finds himself face-to-face with Lafayette, who’s got a rim-full shot glass in each hand.

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Mm,” says Lafayette, and  _ one, two, three,  _ they down their shots together like they used to do in college, the couple times they’d hung out. It burns in John’s mouth, burns down his throat, and he fights the urge to cough. He didn’t even make it all the way – there’s still some left in the bottom of the glass.

“So,” Laf says, and he says it the way a teenage girl might say it when opening the door to fresh gossip. “You and Alexander, mm?”

John stares straight ahead. “What about me and him?”

“You two are really, what's the saying, hitting it off.”

“Yeah, well.” John tips the last of his drink into his mouth. He’s feeling a little floaty, his brain gone soft and hazy and his words starting to melt together around the edges. He hasn’t gotten drunk in  _ ages _ . Not since– well. “He’s cool. I like him.”

Something flashes in Laf’s eyes. “You  _ like _ him, hmm?”

“Not–  _ not _ like that.” Even as he says it, John’s starting to think this isn’t through-and-through true. “And he’s got a girlfriend, anyway,” he adds hastily, as if that’s supposed to help.

Laf’s eyebrows jump and he tilts his head to one side. “Does he, now? This is news to me.”

“Really?” John doesn’t question it. He should have, maybe, in retrospect. But any focus is yanked away when something else catches the corner of his eye– or rather, some _ one _ . Hamilton. Leaning over the bar, head cocked and gazing through shadowy eyelashes at the barmaid who served them earlier, chatting. Just chatting. But still, she’s giggling at every other word coming out of his mouth, that dainty-flirty  _ tee-hee _ girls do, and it drives John a little bit insane the practiced way Hamilton falls right for it. 

Something sparks in his gut. He shouldn’t interfere, he knows that. But as it happens, John’s a little (a lot) tipsy, and Lafayette is already too wrapped up in a fresh conversation with Hercules to notice, and so there is no one to stop John from slamming down his empty shot glass on the counter and marching over to Hamilton and the girl to throw a wrench in their flirtfest. 

He aims for a tap to Alexander’s shoulder, but his hand-eye coordination’s gone a little sloppy, and it ends up a forceful poke in his neck. Hamilton jumps, tears his eyes off the girl to catch John’s gaze. “Laurens? What’s–”

“Can I talk to you?” John says. He tries to ignore how close they are, suddenly, with Hamilton’s torso still draped across the bar counter and John right at his shoulder. Alexander’s eyes flick back to the barmaid, who gives them a tentative smile. John notices for the first time how pretty she is, all sleek blond hair and pink-painted lip, and for some reason this revelation burns in his chest.

“I’m  _ kind _ of busy,” Hamilton mutters.

“Great,” John says, and grabs him by the shoulder, steers him to a different corner of the bar. He throws the girl a smile over his shoulder– faux-apologetic, a smile he’s gotten a lot of practice at in his twenty-eight years.

“ _ John _ .” Hamilton wrestles out of his grip. “The hell’s the matter with you?”

“With  _ me _ ?” John levels his gaze and finds himself looking  _ down _ . It’s funny– all of Hamilton’s spark, his fire, his sharp voice and brash tone and quick-as-a-rabbit wit, tends to eclipse his less-than-average height. “I don’t know. You’re the one who’s chatting up some barmaid when you’ve got a perfectly good girlfriend. Who, by the way,  _ you _ knocked up.”

“Hold up.  _ Girlfriend? _ ”

“Yeah. Or have you forgotten about her already?”

There’s a sharp bite to John’s voice that he doesn’t quite recognize, rough and jagged like broken glass. He’d be ashamed of it, if it weren’t for the three beers he’s already downed. “I don’t know, Hamilton, I never would’ve taken you for that kind of person, you know? You don’t strike me as a piece of crap. Have you  _ never _ seen the way she looks at you  _ ever _ ? Do you literally not care about anyone but yourself?”

* * *

 

_ Girlfriend _ . Alex isn’t sure what he’s hearing at first–  _ girlfriend _ ’s always been something of an abstract concept for him, something he’s never quite been good at.  _ Boyfriend _ , neither. And so he can’t figure out what John’s getting at, not at first, maybe because of the damn alcohol dragging down his brain or maybe because of how hard it is to hear him over the thundering bass of the music. But as he stares at John, into those soft green eyes with their fierce-as-fire gaze, the gears in Alex’s mind whir into motion, and then all of a sudden it hits him: John thinks he’s dating  _ Eliza _ .

“You think– me and  _ Eliza _ ?” he says, and even through the alcohol-clouded rush in his ears he can hear the incredulous tone he’s slipped into. “For real?”

“Yeah.” It sounds more like a question than anything else.

“Dude. We’re  _ not. _ ”

John blinks. “You– you’re not?”

“Nope. No _. _ ”

“Oh.”

All the rage has left John’s eyes, but the quiet intensity left over is almost tangible, and Alexander feels like it’s pouring into his chest. “I mean,” he says carefully, “I love her, as a friend, but we’ve never– we’re not, y’know,  _ together. _ ”

“Oh,” John says again.

“Why’d you think that?” 

“Well, I mean.” John looks away,  _ finally _ , and Alex isn’t sure whether the tug in his chest is relief or disappointment. “She  _ is _ pregnant with your kid. And you’re like, along for the ride. I wouldn’t say it was a– an illogical assumption.”

And Alexander can see, at the corner of John’s mouth, a secret little smile, the kind of smile which pulls at your lips whether you want it to or don’t. He can feel one on his own face, too, as he watches the bar lights dance across John’s cheekbones. Alex likes him. John, and his secret little smiles.

“How come you guys aren’t dating?” he asks, and Alexander has to blink to refocus himself.

“Uh. Because. I don’t know, we just–” He swallows, and for a second he hears Eliza in his head, hears her voice and  _ Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with you, _ and something twists in his gut. Why should John care? “I don’t feel that way about her. I love her as a friend, but  _ being _ with her, it’s not– I mean, I kind of can’t imagine it.”

“You did fuck her though, apparently.” John’s voice is nonchalant. He stirs his drink (Alexander didn’t see him order that one). That’s nonchalant, too.

“Yeah, well. Drunken mistake.”

“We all have those.” John licks his lips, and it shakes Alex down to his core.

“Yeah.” It comes out quieter than he’d planned it to and he doesn’t even notice, really, because all of a sudden Alexander is focused on John’s mouth, specifically on the pale lower lip he’s just slid his tongue over. In his defense, it  _ is _ a rather lovely lower lip. It occurs to him how close they’re sitting– their bar stools are a foot apart, maybe two, close enough for their knees to brush together in the space between, Alexander’s denim against John’s khaki. He can feel the warmth through the fabric. Who the hell wears khaki? Why is he suddenly so entranced by John’s eyes and lip and knee?

The urge to tell the truth swells inside his chest like a wave along a shore, the urge to free the air of all the misunderstanding and confusion and doubt that clouds it, until there really  _ is _ nothing between them but their knees. "But Eliza told me," he blurts, "that she's in love with me."

The part of his brain which is still sober snaps that he shouldn't just tell people that, that this is not his secret to share. But then, this isn't people, he thinks, it's  _ John _ . Something about the way his heart is knocking against his ribs tells him John deserves to know it.

His face is hard to read. "Oh," he says, and even his voice is blank. "And how do you feel about that?"

"I don't know," Alex replies honestly. “I don’t know what to think, or what to do about it, or what I even can do that won’t end up fucking her over. That’s the last thing I want, to hurt her.” He sucks in a breath, focuses in on the soft green of John’s eyes. "But  _ I _ don't. Love her, I mean. Not like that."

He's not sure why he's so desperate for John to know this all of a sudden. Maybe it's the way his eyes are sparkling beneath the bar lights, or the pattern of the freckles across his nose, or how underneath the layer of sweat and alcohol he can smell John's laundry detergent – not flowery or sweet but fresh, clean, like a gulp of cold air. Like John.

If Alex had been watching the people around him, he would have seen Lafayette studying him with a peculiar expression on his face. He would have seen the girl behind the counter strike up half-hearted conversation with another man who will treat her badly. He would have seen Burr at the other end of the bar, pressing his phone up to one ear and plugging a finger in the other and saying, "Theodosia?"

But Alex doesn't see any of this, because Alex is watching John. John with his teeth whiter than the foam on the beers Alex watched him have, John with his smile like sunshine, John with his green eyes and the tiny crinkles that line the corners like wrapping paper. Something warm flares in Alex’s chest, watching John. Here and there a word of the song that’s playing in the background reaches his ears–  _ it’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you _ ,  _ gonna take some time to do the things we never have. _

They say love is in the details, in the teeth and the smile and the crinkles around the eyes. But Alex doesn't think that's really true. Love is in the whole. The sum of the parts. Eliza loves him, but what about him does she love? He doesn't have that many lovable qualities and neither does she, really. They're all flawed, him and Eliza and John. His mind keeps turning back to John, of course. John has lovable qualities, definitely, but Alex can't really say what he likes so much about John – the way he doesn't seem to care what people make of him? The way he laughs at all the stupid things that come out of Alex's mouth? The way he's blunt and straightforward and honest to a fault? The teeth the smile the eyes? He can’t say. There's a lot of things Alex likes about John, but mostly he just  _ likes John _ , likes the likable parts of him and likes the rest of him too because, when it comes down to it, the unlikable parts are the parts that make him  _ John _ and that's all Alex wants. The sum of the parts. That's what he thinks. The rest is just details.

But  _ love _ is a strong word and maybe, he thinks, it's too strong for this. Maybe he just really likes Laurens a whole lot. Especially when he’s looking at Alex like that. Maybe it’s the alcohol, the damn alcohol, or maybe he got that word right the first time, and he's a little too scared to admit it.

It’s all a bit dreamy, this, the deep red glow of the bar lights and the lazy thump of the bass and the quiet warmth in his chest. Alexander doesn’t want to get caught up in a dream. Especially when the dream is so close, and so radiant, and swaying to the beat of the music like there’s nothing else in the world that matters to him. Especially when the dream is a fundamentally bad idea, when the dream could hurt Eliza (Eliza, who loves him) if she found out.

And so Alex tears his gaze away from John, shakes off every thought of how close they’re sitting. “So,” he says instead, “how about that round?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if ur still reading this i wanna say thanks for sticking around so long, i love u guys & all the lovely things you say about this whack ass fic
> 
> please keep reading & please keep telling me what u think (ur favorite lines etc) 
> 
> next chapters A Big One


	7. bad idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> morning sickness; sex and the city; say no to this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from waitress

Alexander hates the rain, all rain, even the heavy summer kind which they romanticize in saturated Italian movies. But ever since he moved to New York, he’s had a special class of hate reserved for November Manhattan rain.

It comes down in surges, pounding on the pavement like God’s tipped over a bucket, and between showers there’s a curtain of clammy drizzle which can’t decide if it’s precipitation or just clouds. Moreover, Alex has never been good at working umbrellas, and he seems to break his every rainy season. This is how he starts his morning: collapsing his umbrella on the train like an idiot, and then hearing the spindly rods holding it in shape snap when he tries to open it back up at the station. So he trudges sans-umbrella through the slippery streets from the station to Eliza’s apartment.

“Oh, hey,” Eliza says when she opens the door. “You’re soaked.”

“No shit.”

“Come on, I’ll lend you a sweatshirt.”

He ought to have protested that her clothes wouldn’t fit him, but in the end he’s tiny for a guy and she’s just average-sized, so it works out. That’s how he ends up in a faded I ♡ LA pullover, a souvenir from the time the Schuylers voyaged to Disneyland, and it kills him that this is what he’ll be wearing in his memories of the day when he and Eliza chose their child’s name.

Eliza’s got a notebook open on her lap, one column with BOY written across the top and another called GIRL. So far the Boy column is well-populated– all the Schuylers’ many uncles and grandfathers and nephews and cousins– and the Girl column has exactly three names (Catherine, the Schuyler girls’ mother; Angelica, beloved sister number one; and Margaret, beloved sister number two, amended from Margarita because Alexander refused to have his child share a name with a cocktail). Besides the change to Peggy’s name, Alex has contributed exactly zero.

Eliza's voice saying his name breaks through his thoughts, and he looks up, into the concerned lines of her face. "Alex," she says again, “besides the change to Peggy’s name, you have contributed exactly zero.”

He lifts a shoulder. “Sorry.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I guess I just don’t have a zillion aunts and uncles to cherrypick baby names from, or like, any family members really, so. Sorry.” It comes out colder than he’d meant for it to.

Eliza picks at the eraser on the end of her pencil. “Come on, Alex, you’ve got– people. Your brother, maybe? James is a nice name.”

“Actually, he was a dick, so I’ll have to pass on handing down that legacy.”

“Look, I didn’t mean–”

“I know you didn’t.”

A silence settles between them. Except for the goddamn rain pattering about against the window pane.

“Rachel,” he says finally.

“For your mom?”

He nods, and she smiles, adds it to the list. “Beautiful name,” he hears her say, and he looks down at his hands in his lap.

When he looks up again Eliza’s gone suddenly pale, like all the blood’s evaporated from her face. “Hey,” he says, “you okay?” When she doesn’t reply he adds, “Was it something I said?”

“Need to puke,” she chokes out. She shoots up from her seat and takes off down the hallway.

Ah. Morning sickness in all its glory.

He rushes after her down the hall and catches up to her in the bathroom, where she drops to her knees beside the toilet and pukes. He grasps her hair loosely at the nape of his neck, and for a second he lets himself marvel at how smooth and soft and shining it is. How even in this time of hormone-thickened stress, Eliza’s hair is somehow immaculate, and hell if that doesn’t say something about her.

He lets her retch as long as she needs to, bracing herself over the toilet bowl on her forearms. After six months of pregnancy she’s gotten kind of _good_ at it, throwing up, if that’s the sort of thing you can be good at; she knows how to get it over with quickly, efficiently, a series of practiced maneuvers like she’s a trained athlete. A gold medalist in puking. When she’s done she pulls back, fumbles for a square of toilet paper and drags it across her mouth. There’s tears pooling in her eyes. She seems to be crying a lot, lately, Alexander thinks to himself – maybe because he’s been kind of a dick, or maybe because of the hormones. Then he winces, because he doesn’t want to be the sort of guy who chalks everything up to hormones. Either way, he’s a dick. Total dick.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees her swipe the back of her hand across her face, and even that is quick, and efficient, and practiced. It’s this more than anything that makes him pretend not to notice.

Finally she sucks in a shuddering breath. “Thanks,” she says hoarsely. Clears her throat.

“Don’t mention it,” Alexander mumbles.

It’s then that a feeling of guilt seizes his stomach as she turns away. She’s the one who’ll be doing the heavy lifting in this parenthood thing. He’ll never know what it’s like to have another human being living inside him. But here he is anyway. Thinking about himself.

“Hey,” he says quickly, “Eliza,” and when she turns to him he tugs her close and hugs the hell out of her.

He’s expecting her to go rigid, but instead she just about melts into him, and Alex melts, too, his heart and his insides and the tight knot in his throat. She presses her face into his chest, loops her arms around his waist. Alex and Eliza. Suddenly the world is right again.

There’d been a day a few months back, one which was some weeks into her pregnancy and where the Manhattan sky was gray and ugly with rain like it is now. They’d been lounged about on Eliza’s couch, and Alex had been thinking haphazard thoughts about how Eliza being pregnant for eight more months was going to suck, and being a parent was probably also going to suck, because he’d seen movies and babies were gross and messy as hell, and it apparently didn’t all become worth it until you saw your little one take their first steps, and that seemed like a long way off from birth. So he’d been thinking about all that, and then he’d said something really intelligent like, “This sucks.”

She’d whacked him on the ankle with her book. Paperback, thank God. “Shut up, no it doesn’t,” she had said, and he’d noticed her other hand drift up to palm her belly, where at that point there had been no bump to be seen.

“Okay, fine,” he’d said. “It doesn’t suck.”

Even though it did, to Alexander it did. Somehow in all of this, he’d had the nerve to think that _he_ was the one stuck with the short end of the stick – the stick being a baby he was accidentally responsible for, and the short end being Eliza’s not-so-accidental decision to keep it. Somehow in all of this, he’d had the nerve to think that he was the victim. Never that maybe, possibly, he was the one who needed to take a toolkit to his cynicism and look at life the way Eliza did. He was the one at fault. _But then again,_ and he could nearly hear Angelica Schuyler saying it, _with you it never is_.

This is the day Alexander is thinking about as he stands there holding Eliza in her bathroom. She was right, he realizes, when she said _It doesn’t suck_ . The _baby_ doesn’t suck, of course it doesn’t. What sucks is the toll the pregnancy’s taken on Eliza – on her body, on her brain. And, if he’s being selfish, the toll it’s taken on Alexander.

“This sucks,” he mumbles into Eliza’s hair, and she lets out a fluttery groan. When he hugs her now there’s her bump between them, the press of their baby against him. He’s half expecting Eliza to berate him with some clever comment (“It doesn’t _suck_ , Alex, it’s our baby,”) but instead she presses her forehead harder into his shoulder. He wonders offhandedly how she can breathe with all his T-shirt in her face.

“Yeah,” she says finally, muffled against the fabric, “it does.”

Alex doesn’t hate their baby. Of course he doesn’t _._ Wouldn’t go as far as to say he _loves_ it, either, but he’s protective of it, fond of it. But also he hates it for forcing Eliza into such a corner of helplessness. He hates that he can’t think of anything to do to help except _be_ there, which he’s never been very good at, just standing to the side and watching other people handle the work. Still: “As long as I’m alive, Eliza,” he says, “swear to God I’ll be around.”

She laughs a damp laugh, a breathy exhale heavy with tears. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Alex.”

He kisses her hair. It doesn’t make it okay, but it makes it a little better.

* * *

**from: a. ham** **(5:43 PM)**

Yo what u up to this fri

**from: laurens**

idk its my day off

 

**from: a. ham**

cool. wanna hang out

**from: laurens**

And do what

 

**from: a. ham**

i dont know, watch a movie go to a bar meet up w some friends? Young people stuff

**from: laurens**

fine i vote watch a movie

**from: a. ham**

ok i have exactly 20 dvds at my apartment you want a list?

**from: laurens**

ummm just your favorites?

**from: a. ham**

finding nemo, les mis, x files season 5, sex and the city season 1-6

**from: laurens**

oh i’ve never seen the last one

**from: a. ham**

excuse me youve NEVER SEEN sex and the city !??!??!?!?!!!!

**from: laurens**

No

**from: a. ham**

wtf sex and the city is THE most iconic, most well loved show of all ever and the epitome of new york an youve never seen it? u have the gall to call yourself a new yorker ????

**from: laurens**

lol chill . i’ll come over some time & watch it, you’re still in apartment 3B right

**from: a. ham**

tf how you know where i live

**from: laurens**

Remember that time you dropped a pan on your foot and like broke your toe? and you made me come over to fix you

**from: a. ham**

u said it was SPRAINED

**from: laurens**

so you do remember

**from: a. ham**

friday 7pm no later or we’ll never get the whole 1st season in. i’ll handle dinner

* * *

 

Dinner, it turns out, is a pot of Earl Grey and a pound-bag of popcorn in a bowl on Hamilton’s coffee table. (“As someone who specializes in people’s health,” John says when Alexander returns from the kitchen with it cradled in his arm, “I really can’t endorse your diet, Hamilton.”

Hamilton shrugs. With his free hand he swipes a piece from the bowl and pops it into his mouth. “Take it up with the person who asked you to, then.”)

From a dusty corner of his bookshelf – which, it appears to John, splits its time evenly between shelving books and shelving all the other knicks and knacks of Alexander’s apartment – Hamilton produces a black shoebox, topped with a powder pink lid which reads SEX AND THE CITY in glossy lettering.

“Subtle,” John notes.

“Box set.” Hamilton grins. “All six seasons, baby.”

“On DVD? You strike me more as a VHS type of guy.”

“Can’t all afford HBO, Laurens,” he says, calm but with an edge to his voice, and John winces. It’s not that he’s rich and it’s not that Hamilton’s poor, but the discrepancy between their incomes – and, more specifically, the respective incomes of their parents – is a gap wide enough to merit treading carefully.

“Besides,” Hamilton forges on, “you wouldn’t know, but it’s a nod to how Carrie– she’s the main character– she’s like obsessed with buying shoes. So it’s a shoebox. ‘Cause of the shoes.”

“Yeah, because the only people buying DVD box sets are nerds who can identify obscure references to shows on sight?”

“It’s not an _obscure reference_ , Laurens, she buys shoes all the fucking time and just because you’re the only person on the planet who has seen Sex and the City doesn’t mean you get to take it out on me.”  
  
He thunks the box down on the coffee table, rifles through it for the first season DVD. When he looks back up at John, he finds him smiling.

“God,” says John,“it’s so easy to get you riled up.”

Alexander looks away, then, a smile tugging at his lips, and John steals a glance. Hamilton is all soft cheeks and crinkles around his chocolate eyes. _Handsome boy. Does he know it?_

Later when they’re on the sofa watching Carrie buy the ugliest pair of stilettos John’s ever fucking witnessed, it occurs to him that after his eyes and his smile and the way he gets riled about everything under the sun, Alexander’s unwavering devotion to this silly girly 90s TV show is perhaps the most charming thing of all.

* * *

 

Alexander’s not a stay-at-home kind of guy, but sitting here with John makes him wish he was. Makes him wish for endless stay-at-home TV-for-dinner evenings, endless hours at John’s side, endless quiet except for the hum of the television and the occasional laugh bursting from John’s lips. It’s that quiet, maybe, that makes him so content. He’s never liked the quiet before.

The truth is, though, he would get bored of it after a week.

They’re curled up messy, Alexander at one end of the sofa and John at the other, but his sofa is so small that even that position doesn’t allow for much distance. John’s got his socked feet up on the coffee table, knees bent, ankles crossed; one of Alexander’s own feet has snaked its way into the space beneath John’s legs, and the other nudges the side of John’s thigh every time he moves. Messy. But– good, in a way that Alexander’s not used to.

“You know,” says John, and then pauses to take a slow sip of his tea, “Big isn’t that great.”

“Excuse me?”

“Like, not only is he not a good boyfriend for Carrie, he’s just not a good character.”

“What? That’s insane. He’s a great character because he’s _flawed._ Yeah, he’s kind of unstable and the on-again-off-again thing is an overused plot device, but he has this _intrigue_ to him, you know? This mystery. Who is he? What’s he really like, how much is he hiding from Carrie? That kinda stuff.”

John shrugs. “He’s just boring.”

“He’s not boring! He’s interesting! Like how we never hear his name ever and you don’t find out till the last episode of the series, it’s supposed to be _intriguing_. And his black coats and his eyebrows. Mystery. Intrigue. Plus I had a huge crush on him in middle school.”

“See? Now you’re riled up and I hardly even said anything.”

“I’m not _riled up–_ ” he begins, but it comes out in the tone of a person who most certainly _is_ riled up. He takes a breath. “I’m not riled up, you’re just…”

“Just what?”

Their faces are close. Too close, even considering the size of Alex’s sofa, even considering the way they are sitting, even and especially considering the fact that neither of them is really, truly interested in being just friends with other– even by those standards, their faces are too close.

And at the same time, Alex thinks, too close isn’t close enough at all.

It’s like the thought has struck flint inside his brain, a spark and then another. “Just wrong,” he says, and then he leans up and presses his mouth to John’s.

For one blissful, fleeting moment, John kisses back.

Alexander’s always hated that metaphor of fireworks, hated the cliché of sparks leaping between lips as the star-crossed unlucky-in-love lovers reunite against all odds in the last ten minutes of the film, all golden and backlit and soaring soundtrack as they kiss before the most dazzling sunset of their lives. Alexander’s a realist – he of all people knows that real life isn’t movie material.

But kissing John – there’s no other way to describe it. Fireworks.

Except then his hands (broad, strong, sturdy) are on Alexander's chest and he is shoving Alex away, their lips parting in a wet _smack,_ the force of the push sending Alex flailing backwards onto the sofa. He catches himself, falling back on his hands, almost dizzy, lips tingling like they’ve been burned. "John, I—"

"What the hell are you doing," John cuts in harshly, and his voice is weak and coarse but bears a sword-sharp edge. His eyes are wide and baffled, something like hurt tainting the edges where his dilated pupils overtake the hazy green. A second passes in which Alexander is too stunned to reply, astonished, even, the deafening thump of his heart in his ear like a one-muscle marching band, his skin still smarting beneath his shirt where John pushed him away—

It hits him all at once, then, that single terrible fear leaping from the back burner to the forefront of his mind, and his shock lapses into a torrent of emotion — a bright roaring flood of feeling in his brain, too twisted and tangled to pinpoint a single sentiment, and above it all there’s one coherent string of thought floating like a gull over a restless sea: _John does not love Alex the way Alex loves John_.

"Oh my God," Alexander starts, but his voice clings to the back off his throat like a moth to lamplight. The words come out raspy, hoarse. "I— I'm so sorry, I thought you'd— I didn't mean to do that, I swear, I—"

"You didn't mean to do that," John repeats flatly, and Alexander looks away, because he plainly can't _stand_ the way John's eyes are burning craters into his own, can't stand the way he is suddenly stammering and grasping at straws like a flustered fifteen-year-old. He bites his lower lip, sucks it into his mouth. For once in his life, he can't think of what to say.

"I just. The thing is. I kind of, um." Breathes, swallows, looks down at his hands. "I like you, John. Like, a lot. And— I wasn't thinking." Breathes in, out, in. "Look, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have assumed you'd…I mean, I get it if you don't feel the same way about me, so, uh. Let's just. Pretend this never happened." He runs a hand through his hair, grips the roots and tugs, like the sting might somehow clear his head. "Fuck, I'm sorry," he says again, and it comes out a whisper.

John says nothing, and this is perhaps the worst part of it all. Alexander's words hover in the space between them, dangling, aimless, heavy like a fruit on the brink of rotting, and for one awful moment Alex wishes he could snatch them back — undo that kiss, unfeel those feelings, have everything be just the way it was five minutes ago. But it is just as quickly that he realizes that's not what he wants at all. Never in his life has he backtracked on an opinion, and never in his life would he trade away that kiss. If this is the end of him and John — and, God, if that thought doesn't make his stomach turn and his heart squeeze — then so be it, but let that moment, those precious pounding heartbeats they spent pressed together, be the one thing he remembers.

But. John is still here, still at his side. He doesn't speak, he doesn't move, just sits there, listless and lifeless and still as a statue, second after second ticking by in silence. Alexander steals a glance at him; his expression is placid, wiped blank, hands folded in his lap, but his gaze wanders the room like a hawk on the hunt.

It's too much, too quiet too long, and Alexander snaps like an elastic. A strangled noise escapes his throat. " _John_ ," he says, "fuck, say something. Please."

Laurens sucks in a shuddering breath, squeezes his eyes shut, squeezes his fists where they rest on his thighs like it's hurting him to speak. "You like me?" he says finally, and it's soft, small, a helpless little sound Alexander didn't think John was capable of making.

He blinks. "Yeah."

John's eyes snap open in a flutter of lashes. "Okay," he says, "so here's the thing," and then he surges forward and crushes their lips together in a searing kiss.

Alexander makes a surprised little noise and catches John around the waist, spreading one hand across the small of his back and the other over his shoulder, feels the muscles shift and swell beneath the fabric as John’s hands come up to cup his face. John angles his head and their noses slot together, and it’s flustered, frantic, nothing like the lazy drag of lips it was a few moments ago, and Alex is _drowning_ , in the kiss, in John.

He pulls away, gulps down a breath of air. He is close enough to notice a single freckle on John’s eyelid which he has never noticed before. “You–” he begins, but it’s like every word in his body has left him, poured from his skin like sweat in high summer the moment John kissed him, and somewhere in the back of his brain he finds himself thinking that if he could trade every word he knows to kiss John Laurens for the rest of his life he would do it in a fucking _heartbeat_. “You like–”

“Yeah,” John says, “I do.”

Alex dives back down to meet those pretty lips where they hover a hairsbreadth from his own. Between kisses John chokes out his name, once and then twice, until he tightens his grip on Alex’s cheeks and nudges his face away from his own.

“Alexander, this,” he whispers, and his breath is hot against Alex’s lips, “is a bad idea.”

“Why?” Stupid question, stupid, stupid. “No, don’t answer that.”

But John pulls back, a handful of centimeters but still too far. “Because Eliza, she– you told me she likes you.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m her _doctor_.”

“Yeah.”

“You got a baby coming–”

“Fine, okay!” Something like a laugh escapes his lips. John laughs, too, and then it really _is_ a laugh. Shallow in his chest. “So it’s a terrible idea, me and you.”

John runs his thumb across Alexander’s cheekbone where he’s cupping his face. “ _Very_ poor idea.”

Alexander wishes, offhandedly, that there was some alcohol in their systems, that the coffee table beside them were littered in empty bottles instead of two cups of lukewarm Earl Grey. Wishes that tomorrow morning, when he wakes up and thinks about Eliza and John and his unborn child, he could blame this on the beer.

But then, no, he doesn’t want that at all. He wants for John to be here with him and for once nothing else between them. Nothing to blame but his racing heart and his running mind. “Let’s just keep kissing till we come to?”

John grins. “Pretty good bad idea,” and that’s that.

Alexander presses his forehead to John’s, looks him in the eyes as best he can until the strain becomes too much. John’s exhale is hot when it touches Alex’s face. He looks so _raw_ , so vulnerable, wide and splayed open for Alex to touch or wreck or love. He lets his eyes flutter shut, lets his world narrow down to _John, John, John_ , John’s lips and teeth and tongue around his own, and he finds that he can’t make himself pull away, can’t say no.

* * *

It's dark when John Laurens opens his eyes again, black as pitch except for the watery orange glow of the streetlights spilling in through the uncurtained windows. Alexander is sprawled across him and beside him, head tucked into John’s neck, his hands limp on John’s shoulders as he sleeps, breathing deep and even and his mouth half open against John’s collar. John can feel the push of Alexander’s belly against his own every time either of them inhales, and it’s satisfying somehow, safe, the way Hamilton thrums with life even out of consciousness.

If he cranes his neck he can just catch a glimpse of the numbers blinking across Alexander’s wristwatch where it's settled against his shoulder — gone midnight, some hours since they fell asleep giggling and cuddling and lazily making out for what felt like years and years. He presses his lips together and they feel a tiny bit bruised.

He closes his eyes again and lets his mind go about its business. He should go home, get in a few hours of decent sleep before the clinic opens at eight. He could leave Alexander a note, or just text him, but then he’d be the guy who didn’t even stick around for breakfast and is that something his guilt complex can handle? _But_ – a second part of his brain springing to life – it’s warm in this apartment, and safe, and the sofa is comfortable despite the inevitable crook in his neck it’ll give him. Plus he doesn’t want to wake Alexander, doesn’t want to think about how long it’s probably been since he last got a full night of rest.

It's only when John begins to gingerly rearrange himself from under him that Alexander stirs. "Stay," he mumbles, and John does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7 chapters of unresolved sexual tension later ... we made it folks
> 
> tysm for reading & as always please tell me your favorite line from this or your favorite part or w/e i thrive on interacting with you guys <3


	8. helpless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> al amanecer; date night; okay, so we're doing this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> re-uploading after the html got fucked. sorry about the wait i love yall
> 
> chapter title from hamilton obviously

It’s not different until it is.

John wakes up, predictably, with a nasty crook in his neck and his arm full of pins and needles from where he’d had it tucked behind his head, which is something that happens to him even when he’s not waking up from a night spent on Alexander Hamilton’s sofa. He also wakes up, not so predictably, alone. The revelation jars him to consciousness, and he rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands, blinks the disorientation out of his vision. Right. Alexander’s apartment, which as it turns out is a fucking icebox. _His coffee machine_ , John thinks dimly, the telltale whir of the crappy Keurig– that’s what woke him up. And, beyond that, the sound of Alexander himself pattering about in his kitchen. He’s trying to be quiet, but his socked feet squeak on the tile. Sweet boy.

Hm. There is something awfully domestic about this, but John can’t find it in himself to be bothered by it.

He sits up and draws his knees to his chest. It’s dark in the apartment, too, but behind the threadbare curtains the sky is beginning to pale. Of course Alexander would be up at the asscrack of dawn. Before it, even.

John makes his way to the open window; there’s a row of potted plants lined up along the fire escape. Succulents. He hugs his sweater tight around his shoulders, and he can feel the hard line of his sketchbook weighing down one of the pockets. He hadn’t meant to bring it here, but now…

He steals through the window, slides it out of his pocket. The bluish light of the daybreak is faint but enough, and with the sketchbook perched on his lap John starts to skim his pencil featherlight across the page. It’s a handful of degrees above freezing outside, sure, but it’s quiet except for the distant noises of the traffic below and Hamilton in his apartment. He lets himself get lost in it, in the drawing, in the sound, in the peace. There is something endlessly romantic, John thinks, about sitting on a New York fire escape at dawn.

“Hey.” Alexander ducks through the open window a while later, a mug of coffee in each hand. “Thought I might find you out here. Sleep okay? I’ve been up awhile.”

He passes one to John, who wraps his hands around it eagerly, grateful for the warmth of the ceramic against his palms. Alexander settles down beside him, his sweatered shoulder just near enough to brush John’s. John is grateful for that warmth, too. “Why?”

“Dunno. I love this time of day,” murmurs Alexander, “right before the sunrise. Maybe that’s why I’m up so early all the time. Don’t wanna miss it. Fresh start, clean slate. Love the possibility of it. Anything at all can happen just before the sunrise.”

“Yeah? That’s a nice thought.” John takes a sip of his coffee. “This is too hot.”

Alexander nudges into John’s space and they are touching for real, pressed together from their knees up to their shoulders. “Wish it wasn’t so friggin’ cold out here, though.”

“Well, it was romantic until you had to go bring that up.”

“You sit on fire escapes a lot, John? That’s some West Side Story type shit.”

“Shh.” On impulse he reaches over and laces his fingers through Alexander’s, settles their locked hands on his knee. “ _I_ like the sunrise because it’s peaceful. No one’s up but me and you. Don’t you like the quiet sometimes?”

“Not usually. Not in thirty-degree weather,” Hamilton complains, but he doesn’t unclasp their hands. “What were you drawing just now?”

“Your plants.”

“Let me see.” He’s taking the sketchbook from John’s lap before John can put up any hesitation and frowns at the page, holding it close to his nose. “John,” he says finally. “These are beautiful.”

John feels his cheeks heat. “They’re not. They’re just doodles.”

“No, come on, I’m serious.” Alexander runs his thumb down the side of the paper. “They look super real. Impressionistic. But you can still tell they’re my plants.”

John shrugs noncommittally, as if he could get the compliment to physically roll of his shoulders. Alexander makes to flip through the pages, but John catches his hand in his own before he can get far. “Don’t.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Hamilton drops the sketchbook back in John’s lap. “I didn’t know you draw.”

“Yeah. Well. It’s not a big thing.”

“Will you show me them sometime? Your other drawings.”

John taps his fingers on the cover. “Sure.”

The first few rays of sunlight begin to peek around the corners of the other buildings, glinting off the fire escapes and catching in the window panes one at a time. John feels Alexander’s head settle against his shoulder; his hair smells like coconut. It sends a little thrill spinning through his stomach, noticing this. It shouldn’t surprise him – John caught a glimpse of the shampoo bottle in the bathroom yesterday evening– but to smell it on Alexander’s hair makes his chest squeeze up funny. To be close to Alexander is to know he smells coconut-sweet. To be close to him is to be allowed to collect a detail so tiny and intimate.

Yesterday evening. Last night. He nearly wishes they hadn’t spent it on Alexander’s sofa; he’ll be feeling it in his neck and his back for two days at least. But, on the other hand – the hand which is smart and sensible and thinks things through – he is relieved they didn’t spend it in Alexander’s bed. Not because of Alexander’s bed, but because of what might happen there.

There’s a lick of nervous energy in his chest, anticipation sparking up and down his insides. _Not yet_ , whispers his reasonable side. _Not yet_.

“Oh, sorry,” Hamilton says suddenly. “Did you want sugar?”

“I like it bitter.”

The corner of Alexander’s mouth quirks. “So do I.” He yawns, rubs the sleep out of his eyes with his fists. “Sorry. Haven’t slept as long as last night in like three weeks.”

“In–” John churns out the math in his head. “Dude, six hours? You get less than six hours a night? You really shouldn’t be doing that.”

“Cheers to that,” says Alexander, as bright as his coffee his bitter.

The sun’s in John’s eyes now; he feels almost giddy as they watch it slowly rise over the city. Him and Alexander and their feelings above the table, it’s not so different than it was before. Then again, he thinks to himself, Alexander is still pressed against him, his arm and his thigh and his head on his shoulder, and oh, that’s new.

* * *

 

One week later, he’s texting Alexander nightly.

For everything that’s changed between them, their conversations are the same as they’ve ever been (friendly toeing the line with flirty, because that’s who John is; banter flirting with debate, because that’s who Alexander is). John sends off messages when he’s up at odd hours of the night, and insomniac Alexander types back before John can check the time. And Hamilton, for his part, still tiptoes around the topic of his baby, tiptoes around the topic of Eliza, like both are bombs threatening to detonate at a single touch. So John doesn’t mention them, either.

(The only thing which has changed is that Alexander, big sap, has taken to signing off with a little heart emoji, and it makes John’s own heart thump a little faster than normal.)

Two weeks later, John’s in his living room, stressing.

It’s been a week and half since John asked Alexander and his jam-packed schedule out on a date, a week and a half since Alexander glanced up at him through his lashes and said _I suppose I could pencil you in_ . But even a week and half later, John’s still no more prepared to go on this date. Partly because he hasn’t been on a date in ages, and partly because it’s a date with someone he really likes a hell of a lot, and partly because the date was _his_ idea and if the whole thing’s a mess, well, who will that be on but him?

(And, for a part which he’s telling himself is small but really is larger than he can imagine, being with Alexander makes him the kind of happy which is too big to contain; it frightens John a little, this, and the fact that he’s never been one to be reckless with his feelings and yet– here he is, plummeting headfirst, so the question now is is it Alexander who makes him that way or is John himself changing from the person he used to be?)

He glances from the first shirt he’s laid out on his sofa to the second. His ex always said that shirt looked nice on him, looked nice with his eyes, and the thought drops into his stomach like a brick. He shakes his head. Alexander’s not his ex. He wiggles into the first shirt and slides the other back in his drawer.

Alexander, for his part, has some otherworldly ability to make himself look nice in anything he puts on and does: John’s seen him in sweatpants and a ratty Li’l Sebastian T-shirt he bought from Etsy, seen him in the neat jeans and V-necks he wears to school, seen him without a shirt and with the soft pocket of pudge he has at the base of his torso, and John thinks he looks handsome no matter what he’s wearing. Or, in the last case, not wearing.

But John’s never seen Alexander in his date-night outfit – dark jeans clinging low to his narrow hips, gleaming leather Oxfords, pale button-down untucked and undone just low enough to showcase how well his throat and his collarbone get along. John’s heart, predictable little thing, flutters against his ribs. _Oh, damn, look at you_.

But more than how he looks it’s how Alexander smiles (wide, white, one canine turned too far in its own direction) that makes John like him, how he slides his hand into John’s and murmurs “Hello, handsome,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world. And maybe it is, John thinks to himself. Being with Alexander is the easiest thing in the world.

“So I gotta be honest with you,” Alexander says as they stroll down the sidewalk en route to John’s dinner reservation. “It’s been a while since my last date.”

His hair is loose and spilling dark and glossy over his shoulders – John notices because he’s usually got it pulled back – and under the orange glow of the streetlights it shines like spun gold. “How long’s a while?” asks John.

A pause. “How long has Eliza been pregnant?”

“That’s not that long.”

“I know. Just saying. Bar’s low.”

John hums. “And to think, they make you out to be such a ladies’ man.”

“Who’s they?”

“No one.” Lafayette.

Alexander grins and swings their clasped hands between them. “Well,” he murmurs, “not _just_ a ladies’ man,” and John’s heart swings, too, in his chest.

The restaurant is nice, all softly-glowing candles and dainty flowers in glass cups and strategically-positioned wall mirrors so the more vain amongst its patrons could admire both themselves and their dates over dinner. The hostess leads them to a table tucked away in the corner; the range of prices in the menu’s wine section leads them to the cheapest bottle on the list. Not that either of them could tell the difference.

(And maybe it’s the wine, but John is content just to look at Alexander across the table. With his face lit golden in the candlelight and his cheeks a little rosy from their walk, he has something angelic about him.)

Said angel has just slipped his phone out of his pocket, using the flashlight feature to combat the dim mood lighting of the restaurant as he squints at the menu, when his eyes suddenly lock on something behind John’s shoulder.

“Well, fuck me,” he mutters under his breath.

 _I’d sure like to,_ John thinks, and the thought catches him terribly off guard.

Two people, a tall woman and a taller man, have just stepped inside the restaurant, her arm linked through his and both their chins held high. For two seconds John thinks the man is Lafayette – same broad shoulders, same wild ringlets, same straight spine – but then he steps out of the dimness into the light from the hostess stand and the resemblance fades. There is something very un-Laf-like about the way he moves: fluid and smooth, a suave something-or-other which comes pre-packaged with the particular brand of confidence that one gets from money. John would know – he grew up surrounded by walks like that.

The lady, though, John doesn’t recognize. But judging from the look on Alexander’s face, he’s the only one.

“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” he says, and before John can protest he’s pushed out of his chair and stalked across the aisle to meet them at the table they’ve just taken.

“Schuyler!” he snaps. “The hell are you doing here, Angelica?”

The woman folds her arms across her chest. “I might ask you the same question, Alexander.”

 _Schuyler_. “Oh,” John says, not quite intending to insert himself into the conversation but doing so anyway, “are you Eliza’s sister?”

Angelica tilts her head. “And you are?”

“John Laurens,” he and Alexander say in tandem, and John lifts a hand in greeting before Hamilton can say any more. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

Angelica stares him in the eyes for a few seconds, and John can nearly hear the cogs in her brain chewing on the name _John Laurens_ . Then her nostrils flare. “Alexander!” she says accusingly. “With her _nurse_?”

Alexander bristles. “I—”

“Her OB-GYN, actually,” John cuts in. “No biggie, though.”

“No _biggie_? Alexander,” says Angelica.

“Look, I know, okay? Don’t tell Eliza. And don’t dodge the question! Why are you here? Of all restaurants? Do you know how _big_ Manhattan is?”

“If you must know,” Angelica says crossly, “I am on a date.”

“With _Jefferson?_ ”

She purses her lips. “With Jefferson.”

Alexander narrows his eyes, looks past Angelica to glare at the man Jefferson where he sits at the table. “Did he, by any chance, pick the restaurant after, perhaps, hearing me discussing my dinner plans?”

Jefferson smooths the linen tablecloth with one hand, offers a haughty flutter of his fingers with the other. “Fuck me,” Alexander says again.

“We’ve been writing to each other while I was in London, all right?” says Angelica snappishly. “I got back Thursday and we decided to meet up. Because I like him. It’s, as your boyfriend here would say, _no biggie_.”

“Jefferson’s a dick, Angel.”

“He’s not. He’s nice. I like him.” Angelica sighs and runs a hand over her hair. “Whatever, Alexander. Let’s talk about how you’re planning to explain _that–_ ” she gestures to John and Alex’s table with its rosy candle and its white wine– “to my sister?”

Alexander chews on his lip. “I wasn’t. Planning on that, I mean.”

Angelica’s eyebrows make an unsatisfied leap towards her hairline.

“Fine. I don’t tell Eliza about your embarrassing date,” Alexander relents, “and you don’t tell her about mine.”

Angelica dips her ever-raised chin a fraction of an inch, just enough that John could call it a nod. She stretches out her hand to Alexander and he shakes it. _Deal_.

“Embarrassing date, huh?” John teases as Alexander turns back to him. He’s trying not to let the prick of hurt in his chest show on his face. John’s plenty used to being called an embarrassment, even when it’s not been said to his face; down in South Carolina, _embarrassment_ was shorthand for _that son who turned out a gay blip on the radar of his wealthy land-owning southern-traditional father_. He hasn’t been confronted with that, this piece of his past, in a while. To hear Hamilton say it sends something unpleasant spinning through his stomach.

But the ever-preoccupied Alexander, bless him, doesn’t seem to notice, and John lets his clenched shoulders go lax. Alexander mimes wiping sweat off his forehead as he sinks back down in his chair. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, more to himself than to John or anyone else. “I know Angelica’s gonna do what she wants, but Christ, _Jefferson_? Is she out of her goddamn mind?”

John maneuvers a scoop of rice onto his fork. “Who’s he again?”

“Thomas Jefferson. The other English teacher at school? I haven’t told you about him because he sucks ass, and I hate him and he hates me.” He spears a slice of his salmon – stabs it, more like. “Always hated him. We’re both...strong willed, I guess. Oil and water. Fighting about shit all. And, like– he’s such a shit stirrer, you know? It’s not like that’s _my_ fault.”

He takes a bite of his fish, chews it angrily in the gap between his sentences. “Anyway, Jefferson’s a dick and I’ve never agreed with him once. But just ‘cause he’s got, like, some freakin’ vendetta against me or whatever, doesn’t mean he’s got to sabotage me at every turn, you know?”

John nods, biting the corner of his lip to keep it from lifting. It is enthralling to watch Hamilton talk.

Alexander glances up from his food. “John, stop smiling. Don’t you get it? He overheard me talking to Burr about our date here tonight, so he took Ang here, so she’d find out about us. Because he _hates_ me, John. He’s always out to get me.”

“Thought you weren’t friends with Burr.”

“I’m– that’s not the point, John, don’t make fun of me. The point is, Jefferson’s out to get me and he’s got Angelica wrapped around his finger.”

“She seems incapable of being wrapped around anyone’s finger.”

“Well, fine. Still.”

John chews on this, if only so that Hamilton has some seconds to chew on his anger. John figures it might be best to let him simmer for a bit. Best to let him cool down on his own.

“Alexander,” he says carefully, by way of changing the topic but also because of the nagging voice in the back of his own head, “why don’t you want Eliza to know you’re dating me?”

Instantly the atmosphere between them shifts, as if the air’s been charged with electricity, the easy push-and-pull between them suddenly wound tight like an elastic on the brink of snapping. Hamilton doesn’t meet his gaze. “We talked about this already.”

“I know. So. She’s in love with you. And that’s weird.”

This is met with an irked glare from Alexander, like _Yeah, no shit_.

“But look, I mean– I know you don’t wanna hurt her feelings, or whatever, and that’s good of you. But she’s not some, some weak damsel in distress. She’s an adult woman. Don’t you think she can handle it?” _Why don’t you think she can handle it?_

“I don’t want her to get her heart broken,” says Alexander stubbornly, “and I know her better than you.”

“She’s an adult,” John repeats.

"I know that."

"So then what?"

"Hell if I know."

"Because of the baby?"

" _No_. Yes. Chrissakes, John, I don't–” His fork clinks sharply against the side of his plate, and he sets it down, rubs his cheeks with the heels of his hands. “Can we just please not talk about this right now?”

"Yeah." John lets his gaze fall to his lap. "Sorry."

A silence settles between them, tense and thin. Their waiter fetches their empty wine glasses from the table and replaces them with a check. In the other corner of the restaurant, Angelica Schuyler and Thomas Jefferson look like they’re having a mighty good time.

Finally John prods Alexander’s toes with his own. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Going for ice cream.”

A smile nudges at the corner of Alexander’s mouth. “It’s November.”

“So?”

It’s not different until it is. _Going for ice cream_ is Alexander pulling up Yelp on his phone, John putting his hand on his arm and saying _No, let’s find a place the old fashioned way_ , and they do; it’s meandering through the lamppost-lit sidewalks until they stumble upon an overpriced gelateria tucked away between two office buildings; it’s Alexander’s gelato in a cone because he likes the waffle and John’s sorbet in a cup because he doesn’t like the mess and the both of them pretending they’re not still a bit tipsy from the wine; it’s lazing in the bar stools by the window with their feet knocking and their fingers locked between them, making up stories about the people passing in the street outside; and then all of a sudden it’s Alexander lifting his chin to touch his mouth to John’s, and oh, that’s new.

* * *

It should be noted that although painting a nursery as an able-bodied twenty-seven-year-old man is not the most trying of tasks, it becomes much more difficult when one is thirty-two weeks pregnant and hasn’t seen her own toes in seven. So, while Alexander drags the paint roller up and down the slowly-Buttercup Yellow-ing wall, Eliza sets up shop on the floor in the middle of the room, one hand on her belly and the other scrolling through her phone.

“Who’re you texting, Eliza?” asks Alexander from the top of his ladder. “All that radiation can’t be good for the baby.”

“You mean if the paint fumes haven’t done us in already?” Predictably she doesn’t answer the question. “I was thinking we should have a baby shower,” she forges on instead, “before the baby’s born. Not for the gifts, obviously–” _obviously_ , Hamilton thinks to himself “–but just, for fun. We could squeeze it in somewhere in the next nine weeks.”

“Don’t you think that’s cutting it too close?”

“Nine weeks, Alex. Who do you want to invite?”

“God, Eliza, I don’t know. You’re the one who knows people.”

“Hm. You could ask your friends. Y’know, Herc and Laf and Burr, that crowd. No, Burr’s not your friend, I know, but he and Theo should be there– oh, and what about that guy Angelica’s been seeing? Thomas what’s-his-face–”

“Jefferson. No fucking way.”

Eliza strokes her palm down the curve of her belly. “Calm down in there, this isn’t a soccer match. She’s been kicking like mad lately,” she adds, for Alexander’s benefit.

“We don’t know that it’s a she,” he replies automatically, so used to this well-oiled conversation that the default response kicks in like muscle memory. He steps down from the ladder and sinks to his haunches, starting in on the lower third of the wall.

“Sure,” says Eliza, the same thing she always says. “And what about John Laurens, for the shower?”

“Shit.” His hand’s jerked and scattered his shoulder with flecks of buttercup-yellow paint. Or was it daffodil that they’d ended up choosing? Alexander’s focus while they had been studying the swatches had kept snagging on how John would love this, these colors, John who loves to paint and draw. “John Laurens? Like your doctor Laurens?”

“Right.”

“Right.” All of a sudden he can’t keep his roller going in straight path. “John Laurens. I don’t know. I mean, sure. He’s– he seems nice. I guess. I don’t know.” Butter _scotch_?

“Problem?” Eliza says this more than asks it, one eyebrow lifted.

“You don’t think that’s a little, I don’t know, a little– blurring the boundary between personal and, you know, professional? It’s not like he’s our, your, _friend_ or anything–”

“He’s been with us this whole pregnancy.” Her voice is light, but Alexander can tell from its cadence that this is one of her stubborn things, one of her no-room-for-budging,-don’t-make-me-pull-the-pregnancy-card things. “And he’s a good guy. Plus I don’t see _you_ suggesting any people–”

“I already _said_ you’re the one with friends. Invite your– your, I don’t know, your fuckin’ yoga group or something. You’re in a book club, right? Invite your book club. Hey, are you all right?”

He’s asking this because Eliza has gone suddenly pale and suddenly quiet, the hand which had been stroking over her swollen belly going still. A couple silent seconds tick by. Then, hardly above a whisper: “I think– I think I just had a contraction.”

Alexander’s lucky he isn’t teetering at the top of that ladder anymore; his knees have gone so suddenly weak that he would’ve toppled over, probably, and cracked open his head. Instead he just stares at her. _A contraction?_ “So definitely cutting it too close, then.”

“Alexander.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know, it just– I felt this pressure and my stomach got all tight. Like a cramp. That’s– isn’t that what a contraction’s supposed to feel like?”

Eliza’s eyes are wide and locked on his. Her voice is shaky. Alexander’s hands, too, are shaking, and he clenches his fists until his nails bite crescents into his palms. This isn’t happening, their baby isn’t going to be born while the walls of the nursery are still three-fourths white and the crib is a stack of slats and screws. “You’re barely eight months.”

“It happens, Alex, I–” She breaks off, the palm still on her belly curling into a fist and her breath leaving her in a rush. “Yeah, not great.”

“Was that another one?” She nods. “What are they supposed to be? Six minutes apart?”

“Four.”

“Shit.” Definitely less than four minutes. “Okay. Eliza–” His heart is steadily creeping up his throat, but he forces it back down, forces his head to clear enough for him to slide his own phone out of his pocket and rattle off a text to John Laurens. “Looks like we’re having a baby.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!! as always please drop a comment with ur favorite part or line or w/e if u can, i love hearing from u guys about it <3


	9. like we could be all right (for forever)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hamilton and Laurens; Alexander and Eliza

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters of club knocked up within two weeks? sounds fake but okay
> 
> chapter title from [dear evan hansen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkdPRcY0k4o)

“They’re called Braxton-Hicks contractions, and mistaking them for preterm labor is very common.”

John Laurens taps out a beat on his clipboard with the end of his ballpoint as he watches Eliza and Alexander’s expressions dim like he’s flipped a switch. “They actually occur throughout the whole pregnancy, but most people don’t notice them until around thirty-five weeks. You’re only thirty-two, so–” He glances down at his clipboard, as if he doesn’t know off the top of his head how many weeks she is, as if Alexander didn’t mention it just a couple nights ago– “Yeah, early but not uncommon. If it happens again and it’s painful, try to relax and have some water, sometimes that alleviates it. You can be sure they’re real labor contractions if they become regular and don’t stop within an hour or so.”

He gives them what he hopes is a kind smile. Alexander meets his gaze; he’s sporting a tremendous pair of dark circles, even as the coffee-black eyes above them crinkle at the corners.

“So this basically didn’t mean anything,” says Eliza.

“Yeah,” says John.

She winds her arm around Hamilton’s and presses her face into his shoulder. “God,” she mumbles into the cotton of his shirt, then resurfaces to add, “Sorry for wasting your time, Dr. Laurens. Got all excited over nothing.”

“No worries.” John looks back down at his clipboard. “I was here anyway.”

This is lie; today is his day off. He came here because Alexander asked him to, because Alexander sent him a single panicked text instead of his usual twenty and it set alight the worry in John’s head. He’s worrying about him now, too: worried because of his tired eyes and their dark circles, worried because he’s hardly said a word since they set foot in this room, worried because because his shirt is for some reason splattered in yellow paint when he usually looks so immaculate. Worrying, worrying. His sister would tell him, _Shut up before you go gray_.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” he tells them. “All this is perfectly normal. I suggest you go home, get some sleep.”

This last part is aimed at Alexander, who makes a face at him from behind Eliza’s head.

Eliza, for her part, blows a raspberry and rakes her hand through her hair. “Sorry, Alex. Nursery could’ve been finished by now.”

“Hey, no, you got nothing to be sorry for,” Alexander murmurs back. “If anything it’s this _angel_ –” he lands an affectionate poke to the top of her belly “–who should be sorry.”

Eliza laughs her charming laugh, and Alexander shakes his arm loose from her grasp to curl it around her shoulders. They are so easy together. It makes John’s chest ache – not in the heartsick way it hurt when he thought the two of them were _together_ together, but a hollow ache, a lonely sort of longing to know someone the way Alexander and Eliza know each other. John’s been on his own for years. To be so close to another person, to have memorized them so completely– it seems almost foreign to him.

Alexander looks back up at John, his mouth quirking up in a tender smile when their gazes lock. Maybe, John thinks as his stomach flutters, that could change.

Eliza squeezes Hamilton’s arm and tells him she’s going to go sign out. Once she’s gone and they’re alone in the room, Alexander slips his hands into John’s and tugs him into his space, lets his forehead drop into John’s chest with a sigh. There’s warmth radiating from his body, like a five-foot-seven space heater, and John’s heart surges with fondness as he squeezes Alexander’s fingers where they clasp his own. “You okay?” he murmurs.

“Fine. Tired. Stressed.” Alexander blows out another sigh. “Better now, though, you know that? You’re a good guy, John. I like having you around.”

John lets himself glance up and through the open doorway; the hallway is empty except for the breezy easy-listening music some intern decided they play. Then he runs his fingers gently over Alexander’s head, follows the curve of his skull to where his hair is tied up in a messy ponytail. Alexander lifts his chin to kiss him, but John turns his head so his lips land on his cheek. “Can’t kiss in the clinic, tiger.”

Alexander lets out a disgruntled groan and hides his face back in John’s chest. “Miss you.”

“I saw you like two days ago.”

“‘S your point, John?”

John smiles in spite of himself. “Go home and go to bed, Alex.”

He untwines his fingers from Hamilton’s grip, and Alexander shoots him a coy smile. Quick as a flash he lifts John’s hand to his lips and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “So gallant,” John muses, and Alexander mutters something which John doesn’t quite catch but sounds a bit like _Hey, fuck you_. He turns in the doorway, then, catches John’s gaze one last time. The corners of his mouth turn too, skywards like John’s rocketing pulse. Then he’s gone, and John’s left alone with his heartbeat fluttering in his ears and in his chest. Oh, he’s fucked, all right.

* * *

 “You know what’s weird?” Eliza is crouched on her haunches in the middle of the Schuyler’s kitchen, attacking the lower cabinets with a rag and a spray bottle of cleaning solution. They’ve been at it for an hour, her and Alexander and Peggy, scrubbing the kitchen within an inch of its life. “I think the thing I miss most is my clothes. That sounds kind of shallow. I just mean, maternity clothes aren’t bad, but I miss– I dunno, high-waisted jeans, and all my heels and wedges, and that sweater dress Peggy keeps stealing–”

Peggy blows her a kiss from the other corner of the kitchen, leaning on her mop and fingering the hem of said dress. “It didn’t deserve to spend nine months rotting in your closet, babe.”

“But I mean, you wouldn’t get it, Alex, you dress like _that_ –” Alexander, wearing faded jeans and a college sweatshirt missing its drawstrings, swats her with the sponge he’d been using to scrub the floor– “but not having my clothes, I dunno, it makes me feel... not like myself. Will you pass the Windex?”

No one ever said being eight and a half months pregnant was a walk in the park. But, Alexander thinks as he and Peggy help her wipe down the kitchen, no one said it would be this _clean_ , either.

John Laurens told him that Eliza is nesting – when an expecting mother becomes obsessed with preparing her nest for her baby’s arrival. It started with the nursery, Alexander supposes, when they’d spent days debating the exact shade of yellow for the walls and whether to buy the moon-shaped or star-shaped nightlight from IKEA. But, to Peggy’s dismay, the nest has apparently expanded to encompass the entire Schuyler apartment. Everything has been scrubbed, dusted, rearranged and re-organized once or twice or three times over. John had laughed when Alexander told him this. _Yeah, Alex, she’s nesting all right_.

For a second he lets his train of thought catch on John, and his heart leaps in his chest. That morning he’d woken up to a text, _Dinner tonight?_ and a heart emoji. Whatever it is that him and John have going, he likes it. He likes _John_. There is so much in his life which is up in the air right now, so much which is about to change, and John is the one thing he’s really sure about. John is the eye of the hurricane.

“What are you smiling about?” Eliza’s watching him with a curious look on her face, and he blinks and shakes his head, like _I don’t know what you’re talking about_. “Okay. And you know what else I miss? Caffeine. You know what they don’t tell you when you get pregnant is that herbal tea is freaking _disgusting_ , all right, it tastes like– I don’t know, rotting leaves in boiling water. I just want– I want a huge  _mug_ of heavily-caffeinated black coffee.”

Peggy catches Alexander’s eye and makes a _yikes_ face at him when Eliza’s not looking.

Eliza douses the next cabinet in a spritz of cleaner. “No, you know what, I changed my mind. I want a chocolate mocha with like four shots of espresso and six inches of whipped cream on top, and then I want to find all the decaf tea in this house and _burn_ it–”

From Eliza’s other side, Peggy makes a gun with her fingers and presses it to her temple, mimes pulling the trigger.

“Hey, Eliza,” Alexander says quickly, “how about you take a break?”

He tugs the washcloth out of her fist. Eliza gingerly hauls herself to her feet and groans. “Good idea. God. Now I have to pee _again_.”

As soon as Eliza’s waddled off, Peggy throws herself down on the tiled floor and drapes the back of her hand across her forehead. Her pink lips puff out a dramatic sigh.

“Hey, come on, Pegs,” Alexander replies evenly, “don’t be such a theatre kid.”

“‘ _Don’t be such a theatre kid_ .’ I’m in _hell,_  Alex, she’s _insufferable_. All she does is fucking clean all day, it’s a goddamn miracle the dining room table hasn’t disintegrated from all the scrubbing she’s done to it."

Alexander raps his knuckles on the gleaming countertop. “She’s just nesting. It’s normal.”

“Wow, look who read the baby book she got you.” Peggy scrapes her wild mass of curls into a haphazard bun at the base of her head. “Like, it was okay when she was just obsessively organizing the baby’s clothes or whatever, but now our house has been reeking of Windex for the past week and I can’t take it anymore. It’s giving me a cluster headache.”

He shrugs. “At least she’s stopped vomiting every two hours.”

“At _least_? You don’t freakin’ live with her night and day, Ham. Night. And. Day. Oh, yeah, ask her when was the last time she went outside. Bet you twenty she doesn’t even know.”

“That’s not true, she went to Starbucks with me last week– hey, ow!” Peggy’s nailed him in the shoulder with a stray sponge. “All I’m saying is, cut her some slack.”

“Easy for you to say! It’s your kid.” She points a razor-sharp fingernail at him in accusation. “ _You_ made her like this. This baby just needs to come already.”

If he’s being honest, the same thought has been squirming in Alexander’s brain ever since the Braxton-Hicks episode. The swell of relief that had washed over him when he thought their child was finally _here_ had taken him by surprise, even a month early, even when they were still so unprepared. He hates this in-betweenness of pregnancy, hates the strange limbo between knowing he’s a father and not quite feeling like one yet, and the months that drag on and on and on like molasses seeping from the mouth of a bottle.  

“Hey, Ham,” Peggy pipes up, “you wanna stay over for dinner tonight?”

“Oh. Um. I can’t,” he says, “I’m getting dinner with a friend.”

He hears his voice falter on the word _friend_. The truth, of course, is that he’s going to John’s for dinner, which, of course, he’s not about to let slip. Peggy just shrugs and examines her nails. “Okay.”

* * *

 Alexander hangs around as the afternoon drags on, alternately scrolling through his phone, gossiping with Peggy, and offering moral support to Eliza at every pregnancy-related groan of frustration. By the time dusk has begun to creep into the sky, Alexander’s made his way out onto their fifth-story balcony to watch the sun fall and bask in the January chill.

(He hates to admit it, but Caribbean-blooded Alexander will always harbor some dislike for the frigidness of winter, all the bundling up in fifty layers and trudging through snow-lined streets. But the four-thirty PM sunsets, those he can live with.)

“Hey.” Eliza leans on the balcony rail beside him, decked out in a puffy blue coat unzipped over her belly and a pompom-topped beanie that would have been inexcusably lame if she weren’t so pregnant. “Tea?”

He accepts a mug – mint, steaming and sweet. The only kind Eliza can still stand, it seems. He takes a sip, lets it scald his tongue. 

The night’s warm for January, not a whisper of snow for the last week. Instead the sun peeks meekly through the gaps in the long-fingered clouds, casting the buildings around them in the pale golden sheen of winter sunlight, and Alexander and Eliza watch it sink steadily over the city.

“It’s the end of an era, isn’t it?” she says suddenly, and he looks over at her. “The end of Eliza and Alex. Won’t be the two of us for much longer.”

“It’s always gonna be the two of us, Eliza.”

“Well.” She runs a palm over the swell of her belly. “Two plus one, then.”

He can see the worry in her eyes, hear it seeping into the tone of her voice. “You’re going to be a great mom, Eliza,” he begins carefully.

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” she says, but the flicker of uncertainty in her expression says something else. When he doesn’t mention it she adds, just as carefully, “I’m worried about us. You and me. I don’t want things to– _change_ between us, I don’t want things to be different.”

“They’re already different, aren’t they?”

“I know. Does that scare you?”

He nods. Her  _me too_ falls unspoken into the space between them.

“Can I say something?” she says instead. “I didn’t think we’d end up like this, when all this started.”

“How’d you think it would end?”

“Honestly?” She traces her thumb along the rim of her mug. “I thought maybe you and I would– be together. I mean, I thought this baby would be the thing that finally–" She holds up two fingers, crosses one slowly over the other. "You know? The fact that we didn’t plan it or choose it and it was here anyway. It made me think it was some kind of sign that we were _meant_ to be, right?”

Oh. That’s not what he was thinking. “You watch too many telenovelas.”

She ignores him. “And you know what? I think we are. Not as people who are in love. Just– as people who click together. People who stick with each other. Partners. And however I feel about you... this baby, she’s a miracle.”

“Or he.”

“That’s really the hill you want to die on?”

He’s too caught up in what she’s just said to dredge up any wit for a comeback.  

“Come on, Alex.” Eliza gazes out over the city. “Look at where we are. Look at where we started. Is this how you thought it would end?”

Alexander thinks, as he always does, about John Laurens’ eyes and his freckles and his lips on his own, and then he thinks, _No. But I wouldn’t change it for the world_.

“I wouldn’t change it, though, any of it,” she says. “For us to be friends? That’s enough.”

Her voice catches on _friends_. Alexander knows why. Him and Eliza, whatever it is they are, all the years poured into their relationship– _friend_ couldn’t ever stretch wide enough to fit it all. He glances over at her in her big coat and her ridiculous hat, and his heart settles heavy in his chest. His best friend? Baby mama? Almost-lover?

But he doesn’t want to get caught up in semantics. Instead he reaches over and squeezes her hand where it rests on her bump, his bare palm over her mittened knuckles, and she turns her hand beneath his to clasp it loosely. This, at least, feels familiar.

“Are you sorry for what happened?” he murmurs. “For telling me you–”

 _Love me_ , he’s about to say, but she’s shaking her head before the words can leave his mouth.

“I regretted it for a while,” she whispers. The evening chill has snuck into the air, and the words are a puff of condensation as they slip past her lips. “And it hurt, you know. That you didn’t.” _Love her_. “But in the end, I mean, I’m not sorry. I know it made things weird. But I don’t ever want us to keep secrets from each other.”

Guilt settles like cement in his stomach. He looks away.

“Eliza,” he says softly. “Do you still love me?”

She is quiet for a long time. He watches her profile, the curve of her cheekbone, the dip of her chin. The sweep of her hair across her neck. Everything about her is familiar, memorized, everything about her he knows. Except this.

Finally she squeezes his hand again. “It’s late,” is what she finally says. “You should be heading home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: dinner and john
> 
> thanks for sticking around! comments/kudos are immensely appreciated, please tell me your favorite part (or something you hated if thats more your style)
> 
> the next chapter is already written so it will be up soon <3


	10. good thing going

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> boyfriends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fancy seein yall here huh
> 
> chapter title from [merrily we roll along](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbH5uxdR-eQ)

Alexander didn’t think, when he confided in John about his fondness for cooking, that John would snort and say he didn’t believe him. John doesn’t know a thing about food; John lives off ramen and apples dipped in peanut butter (his words, not Alex’s), and he still has the nerve to bitch at Alex about _his_ diet, and this combo of unfair situations is the exact sort of thing to kindle Alexander’s pesky competitive streak.  

This is how he ends up at John’s door that night, with his pasta machine tucked under one arm and a cookbook marked off at its spaghetti bolognese recipe under the other.

“Damn,” John says when he opens the door. “I didn’t think you were gonna go through with it.”

“You’re about to have the best friggin’ pasta of your life, Laurens.” He pushes past John into his apartment and immediately stops short. “John. You _live_ here?”

“Um.” John shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah?”

Alexander’s taken aback. The whole place looks like it was plucked straight from an episode of HGTV. It’s cozy, clean, but big and bright at the same time. There are tall windows stretching from the hardwood floor to the crown-molded ceiling, extending an invitation to the afternoon sun. There are embroidered throw pillows on the couch and a towering bookshelf pushed up against a wall of exposed brick. The furniture, too, looks like John bought out a Design Within Reach catalogue – every piece is expertly arranged, not a detail out of place, from the leather of the Eames lounge chair to the glass Noguchi coffee table. And that’s not to mention the flowers – a row of potted amaryllises on the windowsill, tulip and narcissus bursting from a vase on the dining room table. Flowers in the middle of winter, how lovely is that? Alexander has succulents because they run the lowest risk of death if Alexander forgets them, which he does. Dear God.

Alexander’s apartment, he just lives there, just goes there at the end of the day. But this place – this is a _home_.

“No, look, it’s nothing, it’s–” Hamilton drums his fingers across the cover of his book. “I don’t know many people with apartments like this. Is all.” _I don’t know many people with the money for apartments like this_ is what was really on his tongue.

This is ridiculous. He’s being ridiculous. He knows John comes from money.

John is still looking at him curiously. “All right.”

The kitchen, if possible, is even worse, all stainless steel appliances and gleaming granite countertops and a fucking _island_ with a second _sink_ , who the hell has two sinks in the middle of Manhattan? Alexander lets out a low whistle. His instinct is to make some kind of dig at it, bury his insecurity under a laugh, but something tells him John wouldn’t get it.

A half-hour on, he’s got the sauce simmering contentedly on the stovetop while he gets on with the pasta, cranking out the dough in long narrow pieces and slicing it into thin strips. Later he’ll get on with his tiramisu. The truth is he doesn’t even like tiramisu so much, he just picked it to impress John.

“You know,” John says, perched on the counter, “this is really pretty luxurious. Having someone cook for me? Damn.”

The pasta dough splits in Alexander’s hands. “Damn is right. I made it too thin." 

“I mean, I wouldn’t know. The closest to cooking I ever get is defrosting pad thai in the microwave.”

“Oh, well, homemade spaghetti bolognese will fall far short of your refined tastes, then.” 

John snaps his fingers.

The dough comes out right on his next try, and ten minutes later he’s got a counterfull of fresh spaghetti and a date who’s saying _Dude, that was fucking magic, like half an hour ago it was a pile of eggs and some flour._  

“Why’d you like cooking so much?” John asks him as he pauses to retie his apron. _KISS THE CHEF_ , it commands in bold cerulean lettering. For the record, John hasn’t made good on that promise yet.

“I dunno. I like that you make something you can share with other people and they can enjoy.”

“Or not enjoy.” 

Alex hits him with his oven mitt, just to hear him laugh. Except John doesn’t. He just sits on the counter and twiddles his thumbs uneasily. Alexander’s learned in the past few months that John isn’t one to be quiet.

So he says, “Yo. What’s on your mind?”

 “Alexander,” John begins cautiously, “I’m sorry if– the other night, I’m sorry if I pushed too far. When we were talking about Eliza, and– you know. Us.” 

“Oh.” Alexander slides on the oven mitt to lift the lid off the pan and takes his wooden spoon silently to the pasta sauce.

“I mean,” John continues steadily, “I don’t know exactly how things are, between you two, and I don’t wanna force you into telling if you don’t want to, but I just... I’d like to understand why. Why you won’t tell her, I mean.”

“There’s not much to say.”

“Okay, but–”

“Hey, John, c’mon. Not right now.”

“No, but look, Alex, that’s the thing! It comes up and you– you kind of clam up like you’re scared? Or whatever. And it makes me feel like, like are you _ashamed_ of me or something? That we’re together? Because if you are–”

“I’m not,” Alexander says quickly, “I’m not ashamed of you.”

“Then–” John taps his fingers on his knee. “If it’s not about that, I don’t get what the deal is.”

“It’s not. There’s no deal.” He takes a deep breath, feels it rush into his chest and ground him. “I’m just…not ready to tell her about this. This is– it’s a delicate situation, okay.” _So it’s a_ situation _now_ , he thinks offhandedly. His eyes are stinging at the corners.

John knocks his heels against the cabinets. “I mean, okay. If you say so.” 

“Good.” He drops the lid back on a clang, strips off the oven mitt. “Hey, remember how you were gonna _help_ me cook instead of not doing shit and just watching me like this is Top Chef Live?” 

“Top Chef Live? I’d pay big bucks for that.” He crunches down on his third ladyfinger. “These things are the _shit_.” 

“You’re so easily satisfied, John. If I’d known all you wanted was the biscuits I wouldn’t have made a whole tiramisu.” 

“Mm. Sorry. I’ll send a memo next time.” 

“Next time?” 

“Yeah. I could get used to having a chef boyfriend.”

Alexander’s hands freeze midway through dusting off. _Boyfriend?_

It was one thing when Angelica had said in her scathing way that other night at the restaurant. But to hear it from John, for it to roll so easily off his tongue – now it is another.

Boyfriends. Are he and John boyfriends? He knows they’re together, obviously, knows that they’re– an _item_ , as Angelica would say. But there is something so intimate about _boyfriend_. Something so important. Like _he_ is important. When was the last time he was someone’s boyfriend? He’s not sure he can say. The past eight months flash through his mind, a supercut of all the time he and John have had together: all those months he spent with John in his head but out of his reach, all the courage it had taken to lean up and kiss him that one night, all the recklessness, all the risk– there it is, real and palpable, summed up in _boyfriend_. 

That word on John’s lips, it sends something warm flooding his chest and down to his toes. And John, Alexander realizes with a shock of something that shouldn’t be surprise, is his boyfriend. 

The revelation makes his breath catch, his heart stutter through a beat. He turns and looks up at John. 

“What?” John asks.

“You’ve got flour on your face.” Alex swipes his thumb across his cheek, right over a particularly dense splatter of freckles. Then he leans up and kisses him, just soft, just chaste.

When they pull apart John murmurs, “How’d I have flour there if I haven’t done shit?”

In spite of himself Alexander laughs. John ducks his head and lands another kiss to his open mouth, and he’s happy, so happy.

* * *

 

“I think,” John says later, belly stuffed full with restaurant-caliber spaghetti and two helpings of tiramisu, “you should have been a chef instead of a teacher.”

“Nah. Didn’t want to be too cliché.  _ Another _ professional immigrant chef from Nevis?” They’re on John’s sofa, and he swings his legs up to rest his feet in John’s lap. “I was actually gonna be lawyer, you know.” 

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, back in the day, when they sent me up to New York. That was the plan, that’s what I wanted to do. But, you know, law school’s expensive, and I just...it wasn’t an option. So. I became an English teacher instead.” He sighs something wistful. “I still kind of want to do it, though. I mean, I love teaching, love the kids. But lawyering– I dunno. Still drawn to it.”

“I bet you’d be quite a lawyer.”

“Really? That’s not what anyone else I know said.”

“Fine, maybe I just like you.” John scratches at the back of his neck, averting eye contact as he breathes a sigh. “So, uh, what I’m about to say is going to make me kinda sound like an asshole.”

Alexander raises one (impressively insolent) eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I was gonna be lawyer too,” John blurts, and the other eyebrow joins its twin. “My dad had paid in full, I’d moved into a dorm, everything. I even went to half a semester of classes. And then I – I dropped out.”

“Oh,” Alex says again. His tone reminds John of a slowly-deflating balloon.

“It just wasn’t for me – like, it wasn’t my _calling_ , you know? It wasn’t what I was meant to do. I wanted to help people, but not as lawyer. I’m not good at talking, I stumble over my words and I’m not witty or quick on my feet like you. And I hate arguing, besides. So being a _lawyer_...it just wasn’t. My thing, I mean.”

“And being a doctor?” Alex picks at a loose thread on his sweatpants. He’s not looking at John, but he doesn’t seem mad either, and John relaxes a little. “Is that your _thing_?”

“Yeah.” John breathes out slow, steadies himself, settles closer against Alexander’s side. “It’s helping people, but it’s more direct, I guess. It’s logical, and straightforward, and I like that. It’s _science._ Science never lets you down. None of that messy loophole lawyer business.”

“Oh, sorry. Forgot that poking around in strangers’ vaginas _wasn’t_ messy.”

John elbows him in the ribs and Alex lets out a sharp squeak, recoils over to the other end of the sofa with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms gripping his shins. John plants an elbow on the backrest of the couch, leaning his head in his hand and meeting Alexander’s eyes where they peek out over the tops of his kneecaps. “Plus, law school was boring as shit,” he adds, and the skin around Alex’s eyes scrunches up at the corners like he’s smiling. “I’d take a good surgery over that any day.”

Alexander laughs. If it wasn't such a cliché, John would say he could listen to that for the rest of his life.

* * *

 

“But was it your _dream_?” Alex says later, his head nestled on John’s chest, right over his heart, staring up at the popcorn ceiling of John’s bedroom. They’re curled up in his bed, after a Sam Adams-fueled makeout session dissolved into vaguely-tipsy pillow talk. “Like, when you were thirteen and alone in your bedroom at two AM. Did you dream about becoming a doctor?”

John laughs, his chest rising against the weight of Alexander’s head. “Well, no,” he says, “definitely not. I was actually going to be an artist.”

It occurs to him as the words leave his mouth that he’s never said that out loud before, to anyone, never trusted anyone enough to hear it and care.

“Like a drawing artist?” Alexander says. “What did you draw?" 

“I had this turtle when I was little. Her name was Shelly.”

Alexander snorts, and John pokes his shoulder. “I’m serious! Turtles are kind of awesome to draw, you know? Like, the patterns on the shells and shit. It’s fascinating.”

“I wasn't laughing at the fact that you draw turtles.”

“Shut up, Alexander.”

“Okay. Go on.”

John moves one arm up behind his head, the curve of his skull cushioned by his forearm. “So, yeah, turtles. But also other things. People. Faces and hands.”

“Oh, yeah?” Alex turns his head so his cheek is pressed against John’s chest. His skin is warm and soft against John’s. He can feel the heat rushing through the thin fabric of his T-shirt. “What kind of people?”

“Um, I dunno.” He wants to say more, but he doesn’t. Or can’t. 

Alex lets it go, bouncing like a spring to his next question the way he always does. “You still draw, then? You did those plants at my apartment.”

“Sure. On napkins. Post-Its. My– journal, or diary, or whatever. It was always a pipe dream, though. No one makes it in the art business.” 

Alex scoffs. “Don’t mention that to Eliza. She’s a playwright, you know.”

“Is she?”

“Mm-hm. She’s gonna be on Broadway someday and win, like, eleven Tonys.”

“Tonys don’t mean shit.”

“They do to her.”

John snorts. It crosses his mind – the way, _way_ back of his mind – that they’re talking about Eliza, and for the first time it’s not weird.

Alex lands a weak-fisted hit to his shoulder, something like a punch but without the fire. “Hey, come on, I _have_ to support her. She’s like a sister to me, you know? I’ll have her back until the day I die."

Well, never mind. “A sister? She’s carrying your kid, man, isn’t that kind of weird?”

“It is, shut up. We all make weird mistakes when we’re drunk.”

Something catches in John’s throat. _Yeah, we do_ , he thinks to himself, and he knows it all too well.

“The thing is,” Alex continues, “I want to love this kid. I mean, I _do_ love it. But not in the way Eliza loves it, you know? Maybe because I’m not the one growing it in my stomach, and I’m not the one who’s gonna have to squeeze it out of my vagina, but like – it’s so abstract to me, you know? All the ultrasounds, the baby books, I mean, holy Christ _,_ you should see all the friggin’ shit we’ve been buying, we’re basically single-handedly keeping Target in business. It just doesn’t feel...I dunno, real. It’s like I’m watching a movie of a life I’m not part of. And it’s – I’m excited to get to the finish line, but I don’t know what’s gonna happen after I cross it, you know?”

“Babies grow in the uterus,” is all John says. “Not the stomach.”

“Fine.” Alexander rolls off John’s chest and to the other side of the bed. “Never mind.”

John’s not sure what Alex wants him to say. Hell, _Alex_ probably isn’t sure what he wants John to say. Some kind of reassurance, maybe – a promise that everything will be all right and it’ll all be worth it in the end. But John can’t promise that, and even if he could he couldn’t say it in a way that won’t sound like a line from a romcom.

And some other part of him, some bitter, selfish part, doesn’t _want_ to think about Alex’s baby. He doesn’t want to think about what it’ll mean for them, about how being a father will change Alex, change their relationship. And he definitely doesn’t want to think about Eliza, and how she doesn’t even know about Alex and John, and how this baby will absolutely make everything more messy than it already is, the way babies always do. John can see that finish line Alex mentioned. But that doesn’t mean he wants to cross it. 

That’s selfish. He knows it is.

He rolls over. Alexander’s got his back to him, and John reaches out to brush the tips of his fingers across the uppermost notch of his spine. “Everything will be all right, Alexander,” he says, even though he doesn’t believe it yet. 

* * *

 

Alexander wakes up, like always, before the sun is in the sky. 

He blinks, casts a bleary glance around the room before he recalls where he is. John’s bed. Which, as it turns out, is deliciously warm, although that may be due in part to John curled around his back – one arm slung loose over his torso and his forehead nestled between his shoulder blades, holding Alex close to his chest. Alex shuts his eyes again and listens to John breathe. Even stumbling along the fringes of consciousness, Alexander’s suddenly aware of how _safe_ he feels in the circle of John’s arms. How– loved.

Some part of his brain complains that he shouldn’t be using that word. It’s okay for now. After all, he’s not awake yet. 

He’s broken from his reverie by the incessant buzz of his phone, humming in the pocket of his discarded jeans in the too-loud way of sounds before dawn. _Well, fuck that_ , he thinks dimly. _Let it buzz, and if it’s important they’ll leave a voicemail_. He covers John’s hand with his own where it rests against his ribcage. In this minute, he can’t imagine a phone call worth disentangling himself from his delightfully cuddly boyfriend. 

Hamilton lets himself imagine it, if things were really like that. _Alexander, where were you last night? Oh, I was with my boyfriend_.  

He smiles and presses his face into the pillow. Bad idea or not, he can’t shake the feeling that he and John have a good thing going. 

His phone starts up a second round of frenzied buzzing, and he forces his eyes open again. Groaning, he shifts his weight to the edge of the mattress and stretches one arm to the floor, managing to slide his cell out of his jean pocket with two fingers. The screen is a burst of light in the dim room, and he bites back another groan as he sits up and flicks through the notifications piling up on his lockscreen.

Four missed calls from Peggy Schuyler. One call and one voicemail from her sister Angelica. Seven frantic, vividly-worded texts from Peggy, the last two in all caps and littered with language that would make Eliza blush. Alexander’s eyes widen.

Oh, God. Eliza. 

“John. Wake up.” Beside him John stirs, and Alexander shakes his shoulder to tip him into consciousness. He presses his forehead to the side of Alexander’s thigh. “Alex. What’re you doing?”

For a terrifying second Alexander can’t find his voice. “It’s Eliza.” He swallows. The words feel thick in his throat. “She’s in labor.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: oh, baby
> 
> tysm for reading! as always i'd love to hear your favorite parts/lines etc or if theres something i can improve on, talking to you guys keeps this fic going


	11. (i swear i'll remember to say) we were both born today

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> contraction ballet; look at my son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is short(er) but big(ger, relatively)
> 
> chapter title from waitress, of course

The light spilling through the curtains when John opens his eyes is pale and bluish, the watery kind of morning light which takes a moment to register and then makes you wonder why you’re up early enough to be seeing it. John cranes his neck and peers dazedly over Alexander’s lap at the digital alarm clock on his nightstand. Quarter to six, bright and blinking. Great.

“What?” John says groggily.

“Eliza’s having our baby.” The words leave Alexander’s mouth in a rush. “She’s having it _right now._ ”

“Oh, shit.” John digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Like, like _right_ now?”

“Yeah, she–” Alexander swallows. “She went into labor three hours ago. Three _hours_ ago! And I’ve been–”

He cuts himself off. John knows he was going to say – _Here, I’ve been here all night_ – and finds himself a couple levels of relieved that he doesn’t say it. If Alexander hadn’t stayed at John’s tonight of all nights, if Alexander hadn’t switched off his phone because he was with John and not with Eliza, Alexander would have been there three hours ago. Alexander would have picked up on the first ring of his cell.

And he didn’t. Because of John.

John finds his jaw clenched and hurriedly forces the muscles to relax. He looks up at Alexander, at his wide eyes and the upward quirk of his brows and his cheeks drained of color, at his thumb flicking rapidly over the screen of his phone as he reads through his texts. “Oh my God,” he mumbles, teetering on a whisper. “Oh my _God,_ John, she’s _in labor,_ we need to go, I–”

“Alexander. Take a breath.” He pushes himself up on one elbow and lays a palm on Hamilton’s knee. “You’re not going to miss it, okay? You’re not going to miss it.”

Alexander stares at him a second too long. “Right. Okay. I’m gonna call Peggy.”

John nods and hauls himself upright as Alexander thumbs through his contacts, drawing his knees up to his chest. “Your glasses are in your pants pocket, by the way.”

“Oh. Right. Thanks.” He fumbles for them, pushing them up on his face. A feeling of fondness twists in John’s chest. The glasses make him look younger,  dorky in a way that gets people to like you, his already-wide eyes widened more by the curve of the lenses. John finds the corner of his mouth quirking. Cute. Alexander looks cute.

“ _ALEXANDER HAMILTON!”_

Alexander winces and shifts the phone away from his ear. John’s never met Peggy Schuyler, but her voice, at least, is shrill and ear-shattering as it pours tinnily from Alex’s phone.

“Hey, Peggy.” Alex puts the phone on speaker and drops it on the nightstand. He leaps out of bed and starts to shimmy into his jeans. “What’s–”

“Alex, where the hell are you? We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for _hours_ , you unfindable dick!”

“I’m sorry, Pegs, I just woke up, I–” He drags his hands frantically through his loose hair and starts to tie it up. “Everything’s okay?”

“Yeah, Alex, everything’s peachy keen except my sister’s having a _baby_.” John doesn’t know Peggy, but he’d put money on her eyes rolling in tandem with her words. “Where are you? Angie called your home phone like five times.”

“I’m, um.” He shoots John a panicked look. “At Lafayette’s. I slept over. We went out. Yesterday.”

“You better get your sorry ass over here, Hamilton, my sister’s not about to have this baby without its dad around and if she does I will _personally_ wring your tiny neck–”

John sees a muscle feather in Alexander’s jaw on the word _dad_. He sinks down in John’s desk chair across the room. “Look, I’m on my way, Peggy. Tell her I’ll be there in like fifteen.”

“Fifteen. Hey, you got the hospital's address? It’s the one uptown.”

He glances up at John, eyes wide and knuckles white where he’s wrapped his palms around his knees. John can tell how much effort he’s putting into keeping his voice steady. “Um–”

 _How dilated is she?_ John mouths, and Alexander frowns and mouths back _What?_

John holds up his two pointer fingers close together and slowly spreads them apart.

“Yo, Ham?” says Peggy.

“Yeah, uh. No. I’ll find it. How dilated is she?”

“Six and a half.”

 _Shit!_ mouths Alexander. His fingers tremble as they fly over his shoelaces. John’s do too, a little, as he rattles off a text to Lafayette: _if a schuyler mentions A ham spending last night at your place just go with it ok?_

“Angelica says it’s seven now.”

“Shit,” Alexander says out loud. On John’s screen, the three-dotted text bubble on Lafayette’s end dissolves into _And where am i to assume he DID the spend night_?

 _later_ , John types, just as Alexander says “I’ll be there soon, Pegs,” and hangs up with a shaky tap. Then he drops the phone in his lap, hands limp on his knees. Just sits in John’s chair, and stares blankly at the carpet.

“Alexander.” John’s never seen him like this, like all the nervous energy’s been sucked out of him. “Alex. You good?”

“I–” His voice cracks across the word. “Yeah. No. I’m, I don’t–”

“Hey.” John crosses the room and lays one hand on his shoulder, tips up his chin with the other. “It’s gonna be okay, Alexander. You’re nervous. This is big. But it’s gonna be okay.”

“Okay.”

“Breathe.”

Alexander does. “Okay.”

* * *

When he’s asked about it, later in life, Alexander Hamilton will say he doesn’t remember anything much about the day his child was born, and that will be mostly true except for the little things he _does_ remember and wants to keep just for himself.

What he does remember: The traffic clogging the Manhattan streets that morning, and the Uber John called being ten minutes late, and John almost tripping over his shoelace as they raced down the stairs because the elevator in John’s building, conveniently, had broken down that night. He remembers sliding into the backseat of the car, the smell of the driver’s cologne, and reaching over to grip John’s hand, just for something to steady himself. Anchor himself.

He doesn’t remember, for example, how long it took them to get to the hospital, or going inside, or finding Eliza’s delivery room with John on his heels. (He only remembers walking down a fluorescent-lit hallway with doors which all looked the same, and thinking, _So many people have gone through exactly this_.) And then one of the doors is Eliza’s, and Angelica Schuyler comes rushing through it.

"Alexander!" she says as she swings around the doorway. And then, her mouth tightening around the name, "Laurens."  
  
John offers a terse wave which she does not return. Instead she turns on her heel and hurries back inside, into the cacophony of voices spilling through the doorway, Alex right on her heels until he realizes John is not following him. He pauses, turns, gazes up into John's face.   
  
"John?" he says.   
  
"Go without me," John says, even as Alexander's ever-running mouth opens in protest. "Alex, it's not my place."   
  
"John," Alexander says again.   
  
"Go," John insists. "Just go, I'll catch up with you later. Good luck, okay? Go!" and Alexander does.

* * *

He sinks down at Eliza’s side and is reaching for her hand before his knees have hit the floor.

“Alex.” Eliza’s face is sweaty and red, stray hair crisscrossing her forehead and cheeks. “Hey there.”

“Hey there,” he echoes. She squeezes his fingers weakly. Someone’s put her in a hospital gown, paper-like fabric, soft teal. Her favorite color. Alexander’s not sure why he notices this – his brain is so overloaded, so high on excitement and anxiety and fear, that it’s begun firing off observations haphazardly in an effort to combat the rising tide of panic in his chest. He forces himself to take a breath. Squeezes Eliza’s hand. Anchors himself. “Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying to squeeze a human person out of my body, but besides that–” She cuts off with a sharp gasp, her grip on his hand going iron-strong, and lets out a tremendous howl. He’d never thought tiny Eliza would be capable of a sound like that.

“Oh, they’re getting really close together now,” comments Peggy from the other corner. She doesn’t look up from her phone, but her tone conveys at least a fifty-percent level of interest.

“When can she get the drugs?” Angelica asks one of Eliza’s nurses.

“Drugs!” says Eliza. Breathy, like the contraction punched all the air out of her lungs. She clears her throat weakly. “Ma’am, can we be clear about something?”

The nurse – Ann, says her name tag – taps her fingers on the clipboard under her arm. “Yes?”

“I want drugs. I want _massive_ amounts of drugs.” Eliza blows the hair off her forehead. “I want the _maximum legal limit_ of drugs.”

Ann gives her a two-fingered salute.

Looking back on it, Alex remembers only bits and pieces of the hours he spent inside that tiny delivery room, and when he thinks about that day it's like he's looking at a series of snapshots someone else took. There's him and Angelica and Peggy and the two fussy but kind-faced nurses all crowded around Eliza's bed, and finally the blue-smocked doctor who rushed in and told Eliza _Push, push!_ as Eliza cried _I can't, I can't,_ and Alex and Angelica insisting _Yes, you can_ , and Peggy saying _Push the goddamn baby out, Eliza, or I’ll yank it out myself,_ and how then in the blink of an eye it was over, and everything was quiet.

Quiet – except, that is, for the confident wail of the tiny human being in Eliza’s arms.

“Oh my God,” is the first thing she says when she gets her breath back. “He’s a _boy_.”

Alexander’s not sure how long he’s been crying, or what it was that made him start. He drags his palms across his cheeks. “Knew I should have put money on it,” he whispers, and Eliza lets out a watery laugh.

“God,” she whispers.

Alexander still can’t tear his eyes away from his son. He’s still kneeling beside Eliza’s bed, the cold linoleum floor unforgiving beneath his knees but so, so unimportant, and he presses the side of his head to her shoulder. Their baby cries angrily, determinedly, bright and sharp in the tight confines of the room like he’s got something to prove. _My son,_ Alexander thinks dimly, his _son._

He’s half aware of Angelica and Peggy leaning over them and cooing, half aware of the sunrise climbing the sky outside the window and the stray nurses ducking in and out of the room. Most of it slips out of focus. The minutes, too, slip by as their baby settles into his life, his cries dissolving into whimpers and sighs and then into little noises of warmth and contentment as Eliza feeds him.

“Want to hold him?” she whispers, and oh, Alexander does.

His son is such a tiny thing in Alexander’s arms. He weighs nothing, less than the bookbag Alexander brings to work; Alex knows to support his head even as he squirms this way and that, his shock of dark curls silky beneath Alex’s palm. His hands are rosy and wrinkled, dimpled where his knuckles will bump, and Alexander wraps his own index and thumb around one tiny fist. How surreal it is, he thinks to himself. To hold his child. To be a father. To feel, in his bones, how life can change in an instant – in a mother’s final breath, or in a hurricane, or in a tiny delivery room at eight thirty in the morning.

A mistake. An accident. How he ever thought those things about this beautiful baby boy! _I’ll make it up to you_ , is what he promises as he cuddles him close to his chest. _I swear that I’ll be around for you_.

“He has your eyes,” Eliza whispers.

“Your chin.” Sharp.

She watches them fondly. “Yeah.”

It seems like she wants to say more, but instead she just exhales, a thing of relief. Alexander feels as though all these months he’s been holding his breath, carry his worries and his secrets close to his chest and himself on the edge of his seat for fear of letting one slip. But standing there in the corner of that delivery room, leaning into Eliza’s side as they gaze down at their son – it’s as if everything else fades, everything else shrinks out of focus. His son outshines all of it, Alex’s petty troubles, Eliza’s beaming smile, the morning sun slanting through the shades before the window. Alexander exhales, too. There are other things to carry now.

Something warm swells in Alexander's chest. Pride, maybe. More than that.

This is the thing that Alexander remembers most, the moment that stands out in his mind in Technicolor and surround sound.  
  
He knows he's crying again, holding his son, someone he never thought he would be able to hold, someone he never thought he wanted and yet wouldn't trade for the world. For some reason he thinks of his mother. He thinks he understands her a little more.   
  
The tiny baby in his arms starts to cry again, too. Peggy lifts him gently from his arms – he thinks he's never seen her so careful or so tender – and settles him back in Eliza's to nurse. Alexander settles in a chair beside the bed and dozes. The day floats by, and when he opens his eyes again the sky is beginning to bronze with afternoon.   
  
“Hey.” Eliza’s voice drags him out of the shallows of slumber, and he starts. They’re alone in the room – the rest of the Schuylers have gone home, he supposes. “Alex. You awake?”

“Mm.”

“Listen, I know we didn’t really discuss this, but – I really want him to have your last name,” she says.

This catches him off guard. He’d always, for some reason, assumed that their baby would be a Schuyler. “What? Why?”

“Because– a few months ago, when we were picking baby names, do you remember? You said you didn’t have anyone to name him after. It was really sad.”

“Thanks.”

“No, come on. I just mean–” she hesitates, sighs, glances away from him and gazes instead at their son where he is curled up on her chest. “I want you to have this. Another Hamilton.”

He blinks. Her profile is milky-white in the dim glow of the lamp beside the bed, the soft curve of her nose a little blurry, too far away for him to quite make out without his contacts. “I,” he begins, halts and clears his throat. Tries to say something, but nothing else comes out.

“You have family now, Alexander,” Eliza murmurs instead. “A real one. I want him to have something of yours.”

A little whine escapes the bundle in her arms, and Alexander watches her, watches his son, something in his chest going tight. She’s right, he realizes. He does.

* * *

He can't say how long he's been asleep again when he's awoken a second time by the staccato buzz of his phone against his thigh; the hours have all blurred together around the edges since he got to the hospital. He casts a glance at the bed beside him. Eliza's fast asleep – he knows because he can hear the flow of soft, feather-light snores escaping from her nose. His gaze falls upon their son in her arms, and there's a little flutter in his chest.

  
His phone screen is lit up with a text as he slides it out of his pocket, and he has to fumble with his glasses for a few blurry seconds before he can make out the words. _From: John,_ he reads when he finally gets them on. _hey, you awake?_   
  
Alex pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. _i am now_ , he writes.  
  
_i'm right outside_ , John replies, and when Alex peeks through the blinds covering the window by the door, he can see that he is.  
  
"Hey," John whispers as Alex slips into the hallway, shutting the door behind him with a faint clink. He has the widest, warmest smile on his face, and something soft settles inside Alexander at the sight of him. "How are you?"  
  
Alex doesn't reply. Instead he steps forward and wraps his arms around him, settles his face into the warm hollow between John's neck and shoulder. John's arms close around him, too, almost by reflex, one sturdy hand spreading across the small of his back and the other curling loosely around the base of his skull. John doesn't say anything else, either. Just this is enough.  
  
Alexander loses track of how long they stand there, holding each other in the hospital hallway outside his room and swaying slightly. He feels so happy he's almost drunk on it, so at peace he doesn't remember what tension feels like. And he's tired, too. He feels it in every heavy limb, in the slow thump of his heart in his chest, in the way his eyes close by themselves as John strokes his hair. "He's so beautiful, John," he finds himself whispering, and he feels John's lips against his temple.   
  
It's quiet, here, in the hospital uptown. It's nice. He's never liked the quiet before. It's safe, too, in John's arms, and it's safe knowing that his son is safe in Eliza's, and that they are all, finally, at peace.  
  
But what Alex could not have known is that Eliza Schuyler, in this moment, is not asleep. He could not have known that she is gazing past his empty chair, through the gap in the blinds which hang across the window by the door, past the frame of Plexiglas which separates her room from the hallway beyond it. He could not have known that she is gazing at the two people who stand there, holding each other and swaying slightly, and feeling not at peace at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *lemony snicket voice* Its A Cliffhanger
> 
> thank you all for reading this far, please please leave a comment with your thoughts and/or feelings!


	12. (you and i can go) when the night gets dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> parenting 101 ft. Alex and Eliza; Many People In This Situation Are Definitely Lying About Significant Parts Of Their Lives, the fic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cant believe i'm still out here writing hamilton fic in september 2018 but here we are
> 
> quick recap: eliza gave birth and its 2 months since then. alexander and john have been together for a few months & eliza knows about them because she saw them kissing outside the hospital room. okay lets go

The card arrives a week later, heavy and smooth in cream-white paper. A dark-eyed newborn gazes up at him from the photo tucked in its seam. _Welcome Philip Hamilton!_ it announces in embossed cursive. _Born January 22, 7 lbs., 8 oz. to Eliza Schuyler and Alexander Hamilton._

John runs his fingers over the raised lettering; beneath it Alex and Eliza have signed their names, Eliza’s in light pencil with a swooping ornate _z_ and Alexander’s inked with his favorite fountain pen, the letters tight and crushed together like everything he writes. John tips the photo print out from the card and holds it. A boy. He knew that already, of course.

* * *

**From: peggy schuyler (3:01 PM):** alex

 **From: peggy schuyler (3:04 PM):** alex

 **From: peggy schuyler (3:06 PM):** ham if u leave me on read for 1 more minute ill tell everyone about that time u got high and cried during shrek 2

**From: a.ham (3:07 PM):**

Whats good pegs

**peggy schuyler:**

can u come over ur baby mamas having a crisis

* * *

“I thought you said she was having a crisis,” he says to Peggy under his breath when he arrives at the Schuyler sisters’ apartment. The Schuyler Manhattan location.

“She _is,_ ” Peggy says irritatedly. “Look at her, man, she’s been in high-key mom mode since he was born. It’s like all she does is change diapers and breast-feed instead of leave the house. Do you know how _long_ it’s been? Two months, Ham. I opened the fridge today and there deadass was not a single thing besides baby formula in there. She hasn’t showered in like a week! You gotta snap her out of it.”

Across the room, Eliza shifts Philip to her other hip and her cell phone to the other ear, opens her mouth like she wants to say something and closes it before she gets the chance. Peggy chips a flake of nail polish from her thumbnail. “And,” she adds, “you should come over here more.” 

“I come over here plenty!”

“Yeah, like, twice a week. He’s your kid, dude. Make more of an effort.”

She pats him on the head – which would be an annoying gesture if she didn’t need to rise up on her toes to do so – and wanders away into the kitchen. Alex, for his part, digs his nails into his palms. She’s wrong. He was here four times last week. It’s not _his_ fault that Eliza avoids letting him bring Pip home on his own.

“Maria says no one’s found it,” Eliza says, clicking off her phone as she crosses the room.

Alexander blinks. “Who?”

“Dr. Laurens’s secretary.” Her cheeks go a little pink as she says this. “Her name’s Maria.”

Alex swallows. “Oh.”

“Anyway, she says no one’s found Pip’s lovey we lost at the clinic last week. It was the nice one, too, the one Angie’s friend gave us.”

“Oh.”

Eliza raises an eyebrow, and there’s enough said in that arch that her words can stay in her throat. She slips her phone into the pocket of her sweatpants, and her eyes flicker briefly between Alexander and her sister, who is pouring lemonade into a glass at the Schuyler breakfast bar. “Peggy! Get me a glass too.” Dropping her voice she says, “She wasn’t giving you a hard time or anything, right?”

“Our Pegs? Nah.” Alex reaches out and scoops Pip out of her arms– more instinct than a need to hold him, although Alex always wants to hold him– and cuddles him to his side. The sudden change of scenery makes Pip’s pacifier slide out of his wet mouth, bouncing inelegantly against his belly at the end of the cord around his neck. Alexander plops it back in and kisses the soft top of his head.

“So, how about this,” he says, a little because he’s feeling guilty from what Peggy said and a little to mask how the sudden mention of Dr. Laurens shook him a bit, “while you drink your lemonade and try not to get riled up about this lovey situation–” Eliza opens her mouth, _I’m not riled up_ , but Alexander holds up a hand– “Peggy and I will keep an eye on Pip so you can shower in peace.”

“Shower,” Eliza scoffs, “aren’t there more productive things to do,” but ten minutes later the hot water is running and the door to her bathroom is shut.

Alexander drains his own glass of lemonade. Then he and Pip make themselves comfortable in Eliza’s cloud of a bed, Alex curled up amongst her down duvets and fluffy pillows and leaning against the headboard with his knees drawn up and his baby settled on his thighs. Pip blinks up at him with long-lashed eyes, his dark cap of hair wispy against the denim of Alexander’s jeans. Every time Alex sees him, it sweeps him off his feet how beautiful he is; every time Alex sees him, it jolts him a little how much he’s changed. 

“Hey.” At the other end of the room, Eliza bumps open her bathroom door with her hip, twisting up her wet hair in a towel. She’s wearing terry-cloth shorts and a T-shirt he bought her two years ago at Six Flags, when she and her outfit were drenched by a water ride. “He okay?”

“He’s great,” says Alexander. Pip gurgles in his lap. “It’s kinda crazy, isn’t it. How fast he’s changing.” 

The corners of Eliza’s mouth rise a little. “Yeah. Yesterday I saw a picture of him from two weeks ago, and I was like– this can’t be the same boy.”

“Yeah, I–” The words crack in his throat. “That’s how I feel every time I see him.”

“If you want to be around him more, then come over more often.”

“That’s not what I mean, I mean– you know, you’re the one who’s with him every day, you’re the one he lives with, it’s your routine. And I don’t know exactly where I fit into it. With the two of you.”

“He can move into your apartment, if you’d like.”

Her tone stings. “No,” he says, “I want to have him at my place, too, is all I’m saying. I know you’re his mom and that’s more important than anything, but I’m– I’m his parent too. And I don’t want to be one of those dads who’s never around.” _Like my dad_ , he almost adds, but he bites it back.

Eliza tugs at the tail of her towel turban, and the fabric uncoils over her shoulders. “The reason he’s never at your place,” she says, “is because you never have time for him.”

“I can make time.”

“You don’t, though." 

“Eliza, come on.”

“Well, I’m not wrong, am I? There’s always something else to do first.”

“Okay, fine, how about you let me take him home for the night?”

She rolls her lip between her teeth and a damp strand of hair between her fingers. “I just…”

“What?”

“I just–” She exhales. “The idea of leaving him with you scares me.”

“ _What?_ ”

“You know. You. Taking care of him. Without me.”

“Oh, so what, you don’t trust me with my own son?”

“No, come on, I didn’t say that–”

“But it’s what you meant, though, isn’t it? That I don’t know how to take care of him?”

“No, that’s not what I said! Or what I meant. I meant, the idea of being _away_ from him scares me, the idea of letting someone else take care of him, that scares me. I’m his _mom_ , this is what I’m supposed to do. My– my duty to him." 

“And I’m his dad,” Alexander says quietly, “and this is something I should be able to do for him.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

“You were thinking it.”

“Fine, I was. You’re not exactly responsible, Alex, I’ve seen your apartment, I know how often you forget to have dinner, how am I supposed to know you’ll remember to feed an infant–”

“That is _so_ not fair, it’s not like I’m that forgetful–”

“It _is_ like you get so absorbed in your– your _writing_ and your grading papers and your starting Twitter fights with random trolls on the Internet that you forget to do anything else, I mean– do you know what time to feed him at, do you know what to do when he won’t fall asleep? Is your apartment even baby-proofed?”

“What does it need baby-proofing for, it’s not like he’s _going_ anywhere on his own–”

“Oh my God, Alex.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “You just– I don’t know that you’re ready for this.”

“You don’t get to decide when I’m _ready_ to parent my son.”

“I’m his mother.”

“And I’m his _dad!”_

“That doesn’t exempt you from being a bad one!"

The words tear into the space between them like shards of glass, too big and too ugly to have passed between two people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder. In Alexander’s lap, Pip’s eyes snap open and he looks around wildly for a moment, darting back and forth from his mother to father like he’s trying to balance the tension being thrown his way, until his tiny lip begins to quiver and he bursts into tears. 

Eliza’s face falls. “Oh, hey, baby,” she mutters, and she scoops him out of Alexander’s lap and cuddles him to her shoulder, pressing her forehead to the side of his face as if to hide her own. Alex blinks quickly and swallows, tries to tamp down the hurt swelling in his chest. But it’s difficult to pretend otherwise when you’ve just taken a fist to the throat.

“Alex,” she whispers as Pip’s sobs begin to peter out, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s fine. I know you didn’t.” It’s not fine, but the second part is true. He takes a breath, hoping the air in his lungs will soothe the sting in his chest. It stings that Eliza doesn’t trust him with his son. Stings that he’s got his shit with his own dad. Stings that they raised their voices and made Philip cry. Stings, stings, stings. But he knows she’s wound tight, they both are, tight like her hair in the towel, and he can’t bring himself to slide blame onto her shoulders. 

Eliza turns and drops her head into his shoulder. “If you take him for tonight,” she mumbles, “you promise to eat dinner after you give him a bottle?”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Mom, I promise.”

“And,” she adds, “you promise to send pictures if he does something cute?”

Alexander looks down at their son, who has gone from sixty to zero in an instant and is now working a thumb into his mouth. “He’s always doing something cute.”

Eliza smiles. “Yeah.”

“Just for tonight?”

“Okay. Yeah. Just for tonight.”

“All right.” 

“We good?” she asks delicately, and he nods, yeah, they’re okay. Then Eliza says, “But. Don’t forget to feed him every three hours or he’ll get off our nursing schedule. Thawed milk, no formula. And make sure you put him down when he’s _drowsy_ but not asleep or it’ll take him ages to go out, and don’t put him down later than seven. And make sure you put him in his crib on his back, okay, letting babies sleep on their stomachs is super dangerous–”

She catches the look on his face and lets the rest of her sentence fall back down her throat. “I know. Sorry. You’ll do great." 

He smiles a little and tickles two fingers up Philip’s chest. “I know.”

* * *

Alexander is not doing so great.

 Not only because he exaggerated to Eliza how easily he could peel His Work out of His Schedule (it’s not until he and Pip have made it home that it hits him how long it actually takes to type of a syllabus and grade thirty winter finals). But this is only a small part of it. The real kicker is that their father-son afternoon starts with the buzz of Alexander’s doorbell, and his boyfriend, who he had invited over for dinner and then neglected to remember doing so, on his doorstep.

Well, he feels guilty, all right. Seeing John makes him want to spend time with John instead of Pip. But Pip is here, and he has work, so he can’t spend time with John, and he feels guilty about that, too.

“It’s okay,” says John, midway through his panicked apology, “Alex, it’s fine, this is what being a parent is.” 

Alexander’s expression is pained. “How would you know.”

John hesitates. “I wouldn’t.” 

But John, sweet, considerate, ever-generous John, puts on the kettle and gets comfy on Alex’s sofa with a novel he took from his bookshelf and a quilt he stole from his bed. “So you can take all the time you need to do your work.”

Doing the work, it turns out, is not going so great, either. Mostly because Alexander, in a fit of stubborness, insisted on keeping Pip on his lap when he retreated into his office, and this is the night he finds out that work and two-month-olds are two polar substances.

It’s moot, as Aaron Burr would put it. He can’t get twenty words in without Philip squirming the wrong way or pushing at his arm or tugging on the fabric of his shirt.

“Need some help?” John leans in the doorway. The light from the hall frames his curls like a halo, turns his figure to a silhouette.

“No,” says Alexander automatically.

Something like a smirk tugs at John’s mouth. “No?”

Pip chooses this moment to fist a strand of his loose hair and pull until he winces. “No,” Alexander says, “ _no,_ this is supposed to be my night to prove to Eliza I can do this.”

“Well, Eliza already doesn’t know about me, hm?” John lifts Pip from Alexander’s lap, kisses the side of his head and cradles him to his shoulder. “What’s one more little secret?”

There is a hard edge to John’s voice which Alexander can’t place, even as the sight of Pip curled in his arms makes his insides soften. He hears himself say okay, and before John can leave the room he catches him by the wrist and presses a kiss to his cheek. It feels domestic in a way a four-month relationship shouldn’t feel. Or should. Not that Alexander would know. 

It’s an hour later that a freshly-typed syllabus for the upcoming semester is uploaded to his Google Drive, every last final in last semester’s stack has a grade scribbled at the top, and Alexander is rising from his desk chair and stretching out the aches in his back, _clack-clack-clack_ in the curve of his spine. He wanders to the kitchen, thinking he might make a cup of tea, and there’s John, bless him, curled up in the armchair with Philip in his lap.

Pip reaches out to him with his tiny hands, and Alexander scoops him out of John’s arms and kisses his cheek. “Hey, Pipsqueak,” he murmurs, and Pip makes a sound like he wants to babble but can’t help the wide yawn that pulls across his face.

“I gave him a bottle,” John says, “and we read a board book until he got drowsy.” _Goodnight Moon_ , half-open in his lap. Alex’s heart pangs. His mother used to read him that.

“Thank you,” says Alexander. “John, thank you.”

“Mm-hm.” John looks– wistful. Sad, Alexander might say, but he can’t put his finger on it.

“I’ll go put him down, okay?” He’s not sure he needs to, but he leans over and kisses John’s forehead, and the corners of his mouth pull up. But his eyes don’t change.

* * *

John makes his way out to the fire escape and thinks. It’s nearing six, and the air is brisk with the chill of dusk as he watches the sun sink over the city, filtering through the smog to paint the sky in soft pinks and yellows. Urban Bob Ross.

He can’t shake the feeling that he shouldn’t have come. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be around Pip– when he was born he wanted to, desperately. But this want, this ache to get to know Alexander’s baby, it set a heavy knot of guilt unraveling itself in his chest. And so he decided that he couldn’t possibly stick around for this baby, didn’t deserve to stick around for him, when there’s– well. People he didn’t stick around for who needed him more.

But now he _is_ around for Pip, holding him and feeding him and burping him on his shoulder, and he’s already fucking attached.

He reaches out and rolls a leaf on one of Alexander’s succulents between his fingers until it snaps off in his hand. He flicks it away, watches it bound down the fire escape and into the street, where one of the noisy cars will flatten it. There’s a certain guarantee to the end of that leaf which John likes. It’s peaceful, to know what will happen.

There’s a tap on the window behind him. John lifts it open and Alexander clambers out on the fire escape, plunks himself down beside him, and presses his face into John’s shoulder with a long groan.

“Not good?” says John.

“I don’t know,” says Alexander, “how I will  _ever_ be a good parent. He wouldn’t go down, John, God, you’d think I was leaving him in there with an axe murderer the way he was acting. It’s like as soon as I turn out the light he’s wide ass awake and crying again! It makes _me_ want to cry. This never happens to Eliza, I bet.”

“I bet that’s not true.”

“No, she’s so _perfect,_ so much _better_ at this than me, I guess there’s no way I’d ever be as good to him as mama, no wonder she didn’t want to let him stay with me!”

“ _Alexander.”_ John takes him by the shoulders, spreads his fingers over the soft cotton of his sweatshirt to hold as much of him as he can. “Breathe,” he says, and John pretends not to see the quiver of Alex’s lip as he exhales. “Look, you can’t do everything, okay? I know you like to think you can. But balancing a full-time job, and a two-month-old, and writing in your free time, you can’t do that, you just can’t. You’ve got too much on your plate. Pick your battles. Take a break.”

Alexander rolls his head into his shoulder, like the weight is too much for his neck to bear, and wraps his arms around John’s waist. “I’ve never been good at breaks.”

“So–” John leans up to drop a kiss to Alex’s forehead– “practice.”

“John.”

“Yeah.”

“Will you stay tonight?”

John pulls away from him, just far enough that he can peer down into his face. “You never ask me to stay." 

Alexander raises a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “I never have my baby over.”

“I don’t know anything about babies, baby.”

“You take care of them for a living.”

“Sure, when they’re in here.” He hooks a finger into the kangaroo pocket on the front of Alexander’s sweatshirt. “Smartass.”

“Well, whatever, I just don’t– whatever. I don’t want to be alone with him, I think.”

“You think?”

“Something Eliza said. ‘S stupid. But she was probably right, and anyway, why is this a big deal, John, people ask their boyfriends to stay over all the time, I like it when you’re here– so, will you?”

And it’s in John’s nature to want to ask more, to want to ask what Eliza said to Alexander that’s made him insecure. But Alexander doesn’t want to talk about it, so John doesn’t make him, presses his lips together instead, and that’s in his nature, too. 

Instead he shivers. The sun has dipped beyond the horizon, and the March dusk overtakes the sky in earnest as the chill of a breeze kicks up the hair on his uncovered arms.

Alexander nudges him. “Bet I could warm you up.”

“I know it’s been a while since you dated, but you really do need to work on your pickup lines.”

Alex laughs, delighted, and maybe it was worth coming here after all.

* * *

It’s nice making out on the couch, but it makes Alexander feel like a teenager and he’d rather they do it in bed. John hovers over him, leans down and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him, scatters tiny kisses all over his face like staccato notes in a symphony. Alexander, despite himself, smiles. To be kissed with so much effort, to be so worth kissing– it makes him feel wanted in a type of way he never quite felt before John. Special. It makes him feel special.

John bumps Alex’s nose with his own. “Alexander?”

“Oh!” He blinks. Everything but John’s mouth on his skin is hazy. “What’d you say?" 

“I said–” a kiss to the tip of his nose– “do you want to move to the bedroom.”

“Pip’s been quiet a while,” he breathes in response, and John’s mouth twists into the ghost of a smirk.

Alexander’s mattress creaks and groans when he throws himself down on it, and John bites back a laugh as he follows. “Finally some peace and quiet, mm?”

“Mm,” echoes Alexander, and then tilts his chin up to touch his lips to John’s – just the whisper of a kiss, for the comfort of the contact, John thinks. “Although,” he says when they pull apart, “I’ve never liked the quiet before.”

“Haven’t you.”

“No,” he says, a flash of mischief lighting up his eyes. “I’d rather be hearing–” and he skims his hand down John’s back until a breathy chuckle is punched from his lungs “–something like that." 

John laughs and watches the cheeky way the corners of Alexander’s mouth rise. Alex raises a hand back to his face, brushes his knuckles over John’s cheekbone in a way which is sweet and at the same time trails sparks across his skin. His lashes lower a little over his eyes. John could look at him forever. So much to see in eyes like that.

But he’s not in the mood to moon over Alexander’s eyes. Instead he leans down and kisses him again, closing his eyes as Alexander spreads his hands over his back, until–

A high-pitched wail echoes down the hallway and into Alexander’s room, and whatever tension had been building between their bodies in the past minute dissolves in a heartbeat. 

John groans, rolls away from him. Alexander lets his head fall back against the mattress. “Fuck me.” 

“Not in the mood anymore.”

“Shut up, John,” he whines, and heaves himself upright.

Five minutes later he’s sliding back in bed with a teary-eyed two-month-old cradled against his chest. Pip, for his part, sucks on a sky-blue pacifier, staring up at John through damp lashes as Alex settles in beside him. It strikes him again, like it does every time they meet, how much Pip looks like his father. Not just in the shape of his eyes, but the look in them, too.

“He’s so cute,” John whispers.

“He is, isn’t he?” Alex smiles and cards a hand through Pip’s curls. “Now that he’s not single handedly raising hell.”

“Can I hold him?”

Alexander lifts him from his lap, settles him gingerly on John’s chest. John’s hands curl around his tiny body on instinct; one palm is as wide as his back, the heel of his hand at the base of Pip’s spine and his fingertips over a skinny shoulder blade. John is wonderstruck by it, the smallness of him, the delicacy.

“Can I ask you something?” he whispers, and Alexander nods minutely, his loose hair sweeping across his shoulders. “Why are you so anxious? Around Philip, I mean?”

“Not anxious. Nervous. Semantics,” mumbles Alexander. He doesn’t follow up. But it’s such an Alexander thing to say, such an Alexander way to deflect, that John’s hardly thrown.

He nudges Alexander’s calf with a socked toe. “You’re a good dad, Alex.”

“Hm,” is all he says, but he turns his head to peer at him through his lashes. John gives him a little smile. He said it ninety-percent to make him feel better, but the other ten percent settles in the softness of Alexander’s eyes when he looks at his son, the kindness in the way he holds him when he cries, the tenderness in the kisses he drops on his forehead. The way they glow around each other. For a person as reckless as Alexander to love his son so gently – that must be a good dad.

(Not, of course, that John would know. Not that John would know anything about being a good father, not a single thing.)

“Yeah,” he says simply, and Alexander smiles.

“Didn’t think anyone’d say that to me, ever,” he mumbles, “but thanks." 

Alexander closes his eyes, and John looks away, back down at the baby on his chest. Philip’s eyes have fallen shut, too, the rhythm of his tiny breaths smoothing and slowing like a roughened ocean after a storm. At two months, what does Pip have to be stormy about?

And maybe it’s the fact that John’s own eyes are beginning to grow heavy, or the weight of Pip right over his heart, which sends John’s mind slipping to that place it’s not meant to slip to– to the photo attachment on an email he received three years back, an email about a little girl with his eyes and someone else’s nose. He hasn’t thought about her in weeks. A new record, for sure. But holding Pip triggers it, and he lets himself wonder what she looks like now, what her voice sounds like now, whether she still looks like him, and he lets these questions flash by in the span of the second it takes his consciousness to catch up and a flare of guilt to tear through his gut. 

John’s eyes snap open. The memory, the wisp of a thought, float away again. 

“I think Eliza’s mad at me,” Alexander whispers suddenly, and John shakes himself out of his reverie. “I think– I don’t know what I did. But she’s being weird. Like tense, and irritable, and today she snapped at me and she doesn’t ever really do that.” He sighs and leans his head against the headboard. “I don’t know what I did.”

“Maybe it’s hormones,” John offers unhelpfully. “Post-partum ones.” 

“Yeah. Maybe.” 

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with this information, or why Alexander brought it up, or what he needs him to say. As if he could say anything useful. As if the topic of Eliza doesn’t make him want to bolt. As if he’s not feeling too unsettled, too unmoored, by the way he was thinking of a little girl he’s never even met, to say anything useful to Alexander.

“Just take a break, Alexander,” is what he finally says, “please,” and Alexander closes his eyes again.

* * *

The first day of the spring semester after a three-week-long winter break is the same as it always is – a day of lackluster kids with Hawaii-pink sunburns and stray holiday decorations left to rot on the walls through New Year’s, and always one of the young teachers showing off a brand-new engagement ring they unwrapped on Christmas Eve. Alexander drags himself and his students through four hours of lessons, each class somehow more unexcited than the last, and on the proverbial back burner of his brain cooks up a thought about what John said the night before. 

Take a break. So be it.

And finally it’s Alexander’s lunch break, and the door to Washington’s office is propped open a couple inches with a rubber door stop, so he nudges it open, raps his knuckles against the wood. “Principal Washington, sir?”

“Just Washington will do,” says Just Washington, without looking up. “Hamilton, come in.”

Alexander steps inside and stands before his desk, twisting his hands as he watches Washington’s ballpoint flick a signature over a paper. “What can I do for you, son?" 

“Well, um.” Something about Washington’s presence sucks all the words out of Alexander, all the air out of the room. “I don’t know if you know this, but um, I just had a baby, and–”

“Yes, we all saw the photos you printed out in the teachers’ lounge.”

“Right. So. It’s proving to be a little more than we anticipated, his mom and I, and it’s, you know– You have kids, right? Right. So a two month old, it’s not exactly a walk in the park, and I’m sorry to ask this, but I want– need, um–” 

“Say your piece, son.”

“I need a month of paternity leave,” Alexander blurts, “starting tomorrow.”

Washington looks up from his papers, fixes his gaze to Alexander’s from beneath heavyset brows until Alexander feels he might jump out of his skin. “Actually,” Washington says finally, “I don’t have children,” and Alexander blinks. 

“Oh. I saw that picture on your desk, I just assumed–”

“My nephew and niece. Six months, and three years, respectively.” He smiles fondly, tilts the frame that had caught Alex’s eye towards him. “I’m told the family resemblance with her son is particularly strong.” 

“It’s not just because of the hair situation, sir.”

“Really? I think it is.” He sets the photo back down, clasps his hands and looks up at Alexander. “I’ll see you back here in a month, son. And I hope, for the love of God, that you’ll have stopped calling me sir by then.”

“I will,” says Alexander, “if you stop calling me son.”

Washington smiles faintly. “It’s a deal.”

“Okay.” Alexander finds himself struck with a ridiculous urge to bow as he backs out of the room. “Thank you, s– Washington.”

“That’s quite all right, Alexander. Get back to the pizza bagel you put in the toaster oven a few minutes ago.”

* * *

 

**From: a.ham (12:25 AM):**

I asked washington for paternity leave so i can help out with pip 

**From: eliza (12:26 AM):**

is this about what i said earlier?? i didnt mean it

**a.ham:**

You were right and i want to spend more time with him

having him over last night was lit

  **eliza:**

no it wasnt

**a.ham:**

no it sucked

But it was also so great

**eliza:**

thats parenting babe!

it was ok with him all on your own?

**a.ham:**

Yeah

All on my own for sure 

**eliza:**

thank you for getting leave from work

**a.ham:**

Thanks for yelling at me

**eliza:**

i already said sorry !!!!!!like a MILLION times

**a.ham:**

Hey so are we like good

Youve seemed kinda irritated with me lately and idk why

**eliza:**

no im not mad at you

**a.ham:**

I didnt say mad at me

**eliza:**

ok good because im not

**a.ham:**

You sure

like if i did something to piss you off just lmk

**eliza:**

nope everythings fine!!!

ok well im going back to sleep

**a.ham:**

Oh shit didnt mean to wake you up

**eliza:**

it is 12:30 am what did you think i was doing

wait don’t answer that

it’s ok i still love you

 

A heart emoji, blue like she always does. Alexander shuts off his phone and drops it feather-light on the nightstand so he won’t wake John beside him. His breath is calm, rhythmic like the sea spilling across a coastline. Waves breaking on the shore. Alex watches his face as he sleeps. Looking into it is something addictive. Alexander wants to overdose on it.

 _I still love you_. And then he wants to ask himself how he could ever think to keep John a secret from her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember when lin manuel miranda said you have to write until all the rust comes out of the faucet so you can write the clear water? this is the rust (and by that i mean me, im a rusty bitch who writes once every 5 months)
> 
> much of next chapter is already written and it's better i pinky ass promise
> 
> if you've stuck around for all this time or you're just now reading this fic thank you SO much, please please leave kudos or comment something nice so i dont die again halfway through chapter thirteen and i will love you forever
> 
> next chapter: martha manning?

**Author's Note:**

> if you like this fic remember to subscribe so you don't miss updates!
> 
> come talk club knocked up with me (or just say hi) on tumblr [@gaygfs](http://gaygfs.tumblr.com)


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